The Cottage, 'til Dawn
by yoda5683
Summary: A multi-chapter re-imagining of Edward and Bella’s entire first night after her change. The story will go through to the sunrise. An entire night filled with lovemaking and romance.
1. Chpater 1 On The Floor

**Beta: myimm0rtal on ****Twilighted** - Thank you! 

*****All characters, settings, and concepts are the property of Stephenie Meyer.**

**THIS STORY MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.**

* * *

**The Cottage 'til Dawn- Chapter 1, On The Floor**

Edward pulled me towards him with all of his strength. I trembled - too full, too excited – overwhelmed by the moment.

"Bella, I love you so much." His hand cupped my face. "You are everything to me. Everything.

"There's so much I've…" His voice trailed off, hoarse. The pain and urgency of his longing was etched into his face, desire radiating from him.

His beautiful eyes shouted wants that were honest and shameless. He was trying to reconcile his raw physical need for me with the sacred tenderness he felt for me as well, unsure if it could be done. I knew exactly how he felt because I'd tried that too. Except I didn't care. I realized I didn't need them to match. They really weren't at odds, just different facets of our love for each other.

Edward could have me however he wanted to, however he needed to. I was ready to give myself to him in every way, now that I finally could.

"Bella, I've waited solong for you." I knew he didn't mean the past two years. He kissed me with the heft of countless years of loneliness and sorrow being healed in this one instant. "SO very long…"

I stroked his hair tenderly, encouragingly. I smiled with love brimming in my eyes, and a current of volatile passion just below it. "Whateveryou want, I want to be to you, Edward. I love you. Forever. "

"Bella." He pulled me back into him with a sense of occasion. Triumph. And a scorching thirst that blood was not the answer to. This thirst met me not from his throat, but from the very center of him. I grabbed onto his sides, while his mouth insisted on joining mine. Words like _irrevocable_ and _all-consuming_ were now too weak to define what we meant to each other, and the passion between us.

His blunt tongue explored my mouth and neck desperately - a sign of what was to come. I found myself in the unfolding awareness that the limits he'd placed on himself in my time as a human were no more. With no fear for my safety, we would race to resolve our desires in new realms of possibility.

He removed the last tatters of my dress from my frame, and lovingly ran his anxious hands over the contours of my thighs. I could immediately feel the difference in how physically strong he was allowing himself to be. He didn't hurt me at all, but I could definitely feel his grip on me was nothing like before the change. I could also feel his relief that he no longer had to worry about how he held me, and the gratitude that we'd made it here.

I'd already torn away the remainder of his clothes too, as easy as if they had been paper. I hummed in contentment, caressing his sides, and then smoothed my hands down his naked hips and over his perfect bottom. He liked that a lot, but made no deliberate gestures of acknowledgement - his body told the tale. He was too focused on me, even though I hadn't extended him the courtesy of leaving him in his underwear as he had left me in mine.

He paused to take in an eyeful of me – wearing a pretty ice-blue, sheer demi bra and a tiny swatch of ice-blue lace pretending to be a thong. _Alice Cullen, madame pimp extraordinaire. _

I stood perfectly still, allowing him to see his fill of me, to have whatever he needed from this moment. "See anything you like?"

"You have _NO_ idea," he said with conviction. Edward shook his head like he was in pity of me for what was to come, and smiled a crooked smile with knowing eyes. I wasn't sure if he was answering my question or warning me about his future behavior. "… no idea."

Either way, I liked his answer. I looked searingly into his eyes and said, "Then show me."

I pulled a-loose one of the fragile ties on my hip holding the tiny piece of lace in place, still keeping eye contact with him.

Edward surrendered everything he'd ever known about himself to being fully present with his feelings for me. He slowly bared his teeth - half smiling, half provoked - and headed straight for my neck, moaning low in heat. Thrills of energy surged within me as Edward placed his exposed teeth and lips onto my neck and sucked passionately.

His hands guided me out of the scant little panty, fondling and teasing me for my trouble. _Mercy._ I purred and rubbed against his hands.

His nimble fingers tenderly coaxed me out of the top of the delicate bra, before he became too excited and ripped it completely off. _Mercy._

A feral snarl escaped from me without my commission or consent. The cause: his tongue and teeth mercilessly occupying the bra's previous location. Flames licked me on his dancing tongue tip. Finger tips pinched gently and teased infuriatingly. I willed myself to stay standing, bracing myself by holding his hair as I watched Edward's mouth suckle from me.

He brought his mouth back up to mine and kissed me, slowly migrating to my ear to whisper and tongue into it, incensing me.

"Mmmmm. I wonder if the rest of you tastes even better now too… Shall I find out, my wife?" His voice was so soft-spoken, so deceptively polite, and so very serious. I closed my eyes and was grateful to still manage standing on my own.

Edward ran his hands along my neck, stopping at my nape to pull my face into his, kissing me again, even more passionately. He returned to my poor ear. "… or shall I just have you now… like you took that lion…"

My eyes rolling back were my only response to his question. My mind was still too far reeling for me to communicate much else. I felt drunk on the power of his desire.

He was still talking in the smoldering soft voice. "You were magnificent, Bella. My stunning wife, the lithe hunter. God, I almost took you right there while you were feeding." He kissed me feverishly, eyes heavy-lidded and so aroused. He rubbed my thighs and hips possessively. I moaned into his mouth, while I hooked my ankle around his, sliding my leg up and down. Our heavy breaths mingled while our anticipation mounted.

His body was impatient, demanding to be received by me. By the sheer potency of his every movement and sound, I knew just how he was going to give himself to me. Intensely and utterly.

Edward cradled my head as he dropped us to the floor, his tongue in my mouth flickering against the tip of my own. "I can't wait anymore, Bella."

I nodded wildly in agreement, my eyes closed as if this was the last thing I would have the strength to coherently communicate for a while. This was not entirely untrue.

Edward leaned me against the nearby sofa chair, still cradling my head with his hand. His eyes were clear and determined. "Bella, I want you more than you could believe. I can't wait to get lost inside you," he said fiercely, and kissed me with the kind of kiss that started Greek wars.

"Please, Edward, please," I whispered, breathy and with my eyes closed. I licked my lips and pursed them together, still savoring that last kiss.

"_**You**_don't plead. Anymore. The sun doesn't beg the moon for anything_._He pulled the cushion off the chair and laid me down all the way on the floor, thoughtfully placing the cushion under my head and back, even though the floor was in more danger of discomfort that I was at this point. We were eye to eye, and soul to soul, while his finger tips gently opened me to receive him.

"Mine." He said the word so low, so breathy, that I wasn't sure I was meant to hear it. "Bella, I love you so much."

"I love you, too. Always."

"Always, my wife, always." Edward entered me fully in one long, deep stoke. We crumbled into frantic moans at this most powerful reunion. Edward closed his eyes, held my shoulders, and thrust into me so passionately that my entire body shook. It was such a devastating pleasure.

I looked at his face and realized he'd meant for me to understand that he was letting himself be free with me. He eyed me so sensuously, then kissed me the same. He slowed a bit to see if I was enjoying myself. I wanted him to know that I was not scared of his power, that I loved it. I threw my head back, snaked my body in a wave, and rolled my hips into him in the way that had proven quite popular on our first night.

"Ahhhhhhhhhh… Bella… Jesus!" He roared, eyes daringly narrowed and burning into me, from a whole new realm of arousal. I smiled darkly as I watched him scratch part of our stone floor into a pile of silt.

He grinned wide now, seeing that I wasn't afraid of him – that he was safe to let go. He kissed me with an interesting mixture of gratitude, love, and provocation.

Electricity shivered through my system in acknowledgement of our new level, while the larger part of my mind was with my overwhelmed physical experience. I was totally lost in the deep, frenetic thrusts we threw into each other in a fast, confident, bold rhythm.

I realized just how much Edward had been holding back from me, how much he had to control to keep me alive. I held onto him tightly as he turned my body and mind inside out, writing his name into me indelibly with each pulse of his hips.

I called to him in throaty outbursts that seemed to make his passion worsen. He answered me by taking himself to the edge of me and then returning allthe way in. Fast. And deep.

He angled himself to rub against a point of exquisite pleasure inside of me with each stroke, causing me to literally beg for more. He happily obliged.

It was a different kind of fire now, and it consumed more quickly. I could no longer feel blood rushes or a pounding heart, but I could certainly feel furious emotion just fine, maybe even more lucidly. I was in awe experiencing this new dimension of Edward – my devoted soulmate, my husband, the father of my child.

"Tell me how it feels, Bella. Tell me that I satisfy you." He trembled, his voice commanding and desperate at the same time.

"In every way. I can't even imagine anything more."

Edward shuddered at this disclosure, and seemed to hear my statement as a challenge. His hands moved under me to pull me into him, intensifying the rubbing by tilting my pelvis downwards. The subtle tilt was like dialing in a station to its precise location. **Crystal clear reception**. _Okay, NOW he was trying to kill me. _

But a double-edged sword is tricky to wield. Intensifying my pleasure had caused quivers inside of me. He was now struggling to hang on.

"Edward, please… tell me how it feels for you."

"You feel so soft… _**so**_ soft… your body shapes itself to me... yielding… ahh… tightening… ahh… so... damn... good…."

His talking ceased.

"Oh, God, Edward…" I pushed my head back, like that would help somehow. I squeezed his arms tightly, by accident, forgetting my strength. He winced and kept going, slowing down a bit.

I felt dreadful. "I'm sorry."

He kissed me on my forehead reassuringly. "Don't worry..." Then he slipped low and sensually into my ear, "...but you'll pay for that."

My eyes widened. He smirked, glad to see he'd messed with my mind. He kissed my forehead again, then he got to work.

Edward got deeper… _how, exactly, was that even possible…_ He was still concentrating on the same location inside of me, clearly determined that his every movement be on the same excruciatingly sensitive and pleasurable place. But now, he was moving at a pace so slow and burning that I literally felt every nano-part of the experience. Slow was so much worse than fast.

This was not the same kind of slow that we'd shared on the island. Not even in the same zip code.

I imagined this was what it must be like to play video games with someone who had all the programmer's cheat codes. It was too, too much. Actually, too much was about ninety miles back on the highway.

I started to spasm. I closed my eyes and clung to him. Edward saved me from myself and pinned my wrists out at my sides. A feeling of supernatural warmth radiated out from my core to the place where my heart used to beat, then to my extremities. It was a full-body sensation that seemed to push out through the top of my head and the soles of my feet.

"Bella, please open your eyes. I want to look in your eyes." I opened my lids and looked to my husband. He held me gently while I released. Edward tried to calm and console me, slowing down even more and kissing me so softly. I was still shaking.

Edward followed only after I was through this time. I was glad because I could focus on him. I yearned to intensify his luscious shudders. I squeezed down on him from the inside, giving him much pleasure. I felt every ripple in his body as he succumbed to my inner grasp upon him. Roaring. Growling. Groaning. Saying my name again and again. _My _name. This gorgeous, sexy man was for me alone. His body was so beautiful , and he was all mine. And he was inside of me, totally free and sharing himself with me in a way he would never share with another woman. I was so aroused again, I tongued into his mouth and hummed in a moan.

Edward's body offered no more struggle. He kissed my mouth with redemption, then collapsed. I cradled him with all the love that I had in my body.

We laid out side by side, our backs on the floor. He reached his hand out to hold mine while we stared up at the beams in the ceiling.

"Wowwww," I said like a nine year old who had just seen a superhero movie.

He snickered in agreement. "Indeed."

I rolled over onto Edward and put my arms around his neck. I kissed his neck, faking a growl. "Grrr."

He bellowed with laughter and kissed the top of my head. I laid my head on the hollow of his collar bone, and traced his leg with my toes, while he gently caressed my shoulder.

"So… that was, um…"

He snickered again, this time louder. "I know. For me too, love."

"I didn't even know it could be like that."

"Neither did I. Bella, thank you."

"For...?"

"Just, thank you." I knew then what he couldn't put into words. He was thanking me for giving him the freedom to be totally himself and explore his potency. He wouldn't say it, but I'd already considered that this was really the first time that Edward got to make love as himself. The other times, while beautiful and pleasurable for both of us, were all about me and my needs, and my safety. Tonight, we made love as equals. Tonight, Edward gave fully from his being. He loved me physically as much as he loved me emotionally and spiritually - with all his might.

I kissed him, wanting to reassure him that I understood him now. We laid together, looking up at the dark ceiling, drinking in the moment.

"Do you wanna hear something crazy?" I asked, stroking his neck, kissing it, tracing his side with my fingers.

"You want to go again already, don't you?" he accused with amusement.

"Very much, yes."

"Oh, thank goodness. Me too." He sounded relieved. "I just didn't want to rush you."

We both laughed, amused at how absolutely brilliant our lives were. We kissed like gleeful partners in crime about to toilet paper a front lawn instead of insatiable newlyweds who were ready again after only moments.

_God bless vampire recovery time._

"But um…"

"Yes, love, what is it?" He rubbed my shoulder reassuringly. "You can tell me." I could see he was now worried he'd been a little too rough with me.

"No, I'm fine, GREAT actually. Seriously great." He grinned. "It's just that I, uh…"

"What, is it, sweetheart? Please tell me." He was relieved, but still impatient with concern.

"I want to be on top this time."

"Oh, I see." He said it dreamily instead of as coolly as he'd meant to. He realized he'd just betrayed one of his fantasies. Edward looked down out the side of his eye at me to see if I'd caught that, and I caught him sneaking the look. We both cracked up laughing again. I raised an eyebrow, debating on whether to try to find out what else was churning in his beautiful head or whether to kiss those full, yummy lips.

Reading my face, he kissed me fantastically as a preemptive strike. I shook it off. He wasn't the only one who could dazzle these days.

I sat up on him, knees off to each side straddling him. I guided his hands to clasp my waist, and shook out my hair like a hair commercial. Playing up the allure of the bell ringing in my voice, I inquired, "So you've been thinking about me on top, hmm?"

"Yes," he admitted in a soft, hesitant voice, eyeing me up and down.

I led his hands up from my waist to my chest and left them there, putting my arms behind my head like a pinup girl. He began to slowly massage and caress me while I arched into him and closed my eyes.

"Tell me what else you think about." My voice was dripping with fantasy. I couldn't believe how powerful and sexy I felt. Edward looked absolutely defenseless.

"You… under the moonlight with your pretty legs wrapped around me." He tone was deep, surrendered. He moved his hands down to my legs while he was talking about them.

"Mmm. That sounds nice. What else?"

"No no. It's your turn, Mrs. Cullen." His index fingers traced painfully slow lines up my sides.

"I wish we'd made love on the beach of Isle Esme – right there in the sand."

"Ah, I see. Well that can be arranged quite easily," he said with a smile in his voice. I could already see the chartered flight being formulated in his brain. "Now is it the white sand or is it to do with the island itself? "

"No, sir. It's your turn for the next question." He sighed, frustrated that he'd got caught cheating.

"Now, Bella, this one is very dear to me. Please don't injure me by mocking it."

"Edward! Why would you think…" I was a little insulted, but then considered how I'd acted with the whole marriage proposal thing. "…yeah, okay. But you should know I would never mock you about something like this."

"Thank you, and the same for you, please know. You can tell me anything your heart desires. I want to completely fulfill you, Bella." He touched my chin to focus my face.

I leaned in and kissed him. "Thank you, me too." I was getting quite clouded with emotion, but still curious about his other fantasy, so I quickly asked before my body could change my mind for me. "So what's your special one?"

"Well… I was rather disappointed to not have undressed you from your wedding gown." He looked down. "You looked so lovely, and the peek I got of you in that garter belt during the reception… oh, Bella." His eyes rolled back a mixture of lust and disappointment. "I feel like I missed the chance to, well, unwrap my present, as it were."

"We can definitely take care of that one," I said matter-of-factly. He grinned ear-to-ear at how on-board I was.

He tousled my hair again. "Do _you_ have any others, love?"

"A few," I said coquettishly.

"Well?"

"Mostly I just really want to be right where I am right now." Edward smiled warmly, and looked down humbled. "But there is one more I really think about all the time." I got a little heated up again just thinking about it.

"Bella, you have to tell me, what is it?"

"Our meadow. I would love for us to go to the meadow." He smiled gleefully, betraying himself again. "So that's one of yours too?"I asked.

"My very first fancy of you that way, actually… and my favorite."

"We should go tonight!"

"Well… probably not a good idea tonight. Let's go another night, tomorrow perhaps."

"Why?" I whined, not wanting to wait for anything anymore.

"I should probably have a chance to scout it first, make sure no one is in the area, start earlier in the evening."

I pouted and stroked his cheek.

"Should I even bother to continue to reason with you?"

"Nope."

"I didn't think so… alright," he sighed. "I'll go check it out." He shook his head, smiling. "Incorrigible."

"And don't you forget it."

"But before I go, I'm going to need… a little more… of you."

"Like I would even let you get up right now." I winked at Edward; he shook his head again and smiled at me.


	2. Chapter 2 On Top

**Beta: myimm0rtal on ****Twilighted** - Thank you! 

*****All characters, settings, and concepts are the property of Stephenie Meyer.**

**THIS STORY MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.**

* * *

**The Cottage 'til Dawn- Chapter 2, On Top**

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If someone had told me two years ago, when I left Phoenix, that on the day that would have been my nineteenth human birthday, I would be married… to a vampire, have a child… with said vampire, and be caught up in whirlwind romance and new life… _as_ a vampire myself, I would have asked that person to just say no to drugs.

But since it all did happen, I would simply clarify that I was still only eighteen, _thank you very_ _much_ – then I'd be exactly where I was now. Doing exactly what I was doing right now. Overjoyed that all of this was real and really happening to me.

"Bella, I'm absolutely crazy about you, and it's completely criminal how you use this to your advantage."

"Shush."

Edward was still going on about the meadow. He was interfering with me appreciating that my life was impossibly beautiful all because of his love and presence in it. And hey, if a kiss was what it took to render him silent, that's what I had to do. And if it took another kiss to make me the boss of him, I had to do that too.

I was straddling this gorgeous man that was madly in love with me, and I was about to be engaged in mind-altering passion with him – _again._ I was a newborn vampire, with countless lifetimes of joy and adventure ahead of me. It was time to start being the me I would have never dreamed I could be while I had the ability to dream.

I'd already paid my dues to the fire of change. And to all the other things we'd survived together in the last two years. S_urely….surely, I'd earned this._

I didn't want to miss a thing about this moment. I was the consort of a god - confident and strong, and for the first time in my life, I felt powerful. And beautiful. I finally felt like the queen that Edward had always regarded me to be.

I closed my eyes and rubbed his chest while he gently embraced my hips. We breathed deeply in together, tasting the air - it was something quite delicious to savor.

When I opened my eyes again, the room reminded me that it too had something to say about the moment. It was full of rich darkness and shadows exchanging composition and balance with the moonlight. I could see as clearly as if we had a hundred lights on. Colors were ten octaves lower but still filling the room with vivid atmosphere.

There was something soft and cozy about the darkness, something enchanting about the sounds in a room filled with night. I felt that even as a human. Maybe my soul always knew my destiny, this destiny.

I looked at Edward's extraordinary face - his radiant skin contoured in shades like midnight purple and charcoal teal. His topaz eyes had only subtle light to bounce off, so they back-lit in the moonlight's pale whisper. Glints in his eyes shone dark pewter and sterling.

His eyelashes softened the severity of his intense focus on me, but did nothing to soften the need building within me.

Edward's expression was a mixture of soulful stillness and anticipation of the imminent. I couldn't help but wonder what he was thinking of me with my wild, crimson eyes, shimmering voice, and stealth new body - Bella 2.0.

I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he still found me attractive. After the way he'd made love to me just now, there could be no doubt. But I still wished I knew exactly what he was thinking. I wondered if he was as worried as I that I might injure _him_ now.

I paused, thinking about when I first woke up and hugged him too hard, and of course just a while ago when I broke both his arms. _I wasn't even grabbing him with all my strength. What would happen if I really lost control? _

"Are you nervous, my love?" he asked with care, brushing my outer thighs. I knew it had only been a short pause of thinking in my mind, but a pause it had been, nonetheless. Of course I would be held to vampire time standards now, and of course he would recognize three seconds as an extended distraction for me. _I have to get better at this whole mult-tasking thing. I certainly have the space for it._

"A little, I guess." My answer was only partially honest. I wasn't so much nervous about the mechanics, not that I had a cosmopolitan knowledge or anything. I just trusted that when the time came, it would come naturally to me again. I was now anxious that Edward would not be alright if I got carried away.

I decided to tell him, even if it might kill the mood. _Better the mood than him._

"I'm just worried I might hurt you."

He laughed, endeared - wounding my ego, and momentarily angering the newborn's temper.

He saw my face and offered conciliatory eyes. "No, love, that wasn't my meaning. I **know** you could easily hurt me."

I looked down, remembering the tiny fracturing and crushing sounds in his arm before, thankful that they healed almost as quickly as they came.

He touched my face softly, inviting me, gently, to look at him. "I just see this whole situation as a little surreal, is all. It would appear you and I have traded places." He smiled warmly. My mood did not improve.

"I know you love me dearly, and that you'll do your best to be careful. That's all I would ever ask. You really are doing so well."

"Would everyone please stop saying that! I'm scared that I could really hurt you."

He looked vindicated. "Yes, it's annoying, isn't it?" But he smiled with real empathy. "Take heart, my love, you've had only hours to learn how to navigate your strength. I've had many decades of practice. It will come easier, I promise.

"And I'd be healed in very short order AND there's no risk of _you_ killing _me_… well, not in a way I wouldn't very much enjoy." He said it with copious amounts of crooked smile. I felt a little easier, but not by much.

His face hinted that he was finished with this particular discussion, fully ready to accept any consequences.

"Bella, you're about to lose your turn. I would suggest you seize this window of opportunity… if you'd like to retain it." He said it in a playful tone, while he seductively rubbed the inside of my knees in slow, deliberate swirls that threatened to move higher.

My knight was once again rescuing me. Even if it was risky toying with a newborn, Edward just wanted me to be happy and feel good about myself. He was giving me either a face-saving exit from my stress about the driver's seat or the motivation to get confident again. I chose the latter.

I laced my fingers with his and leaned into kissing him very sweetly, and then uncloaked my verbal dagger. "You could _**try.**_" I smiled thinly with raised eyebrows and narrowed eyes.

His face carried a smug satisfaction. Even though I knew what he was doing, and he knew I knew, I loved that he was so encouraging with me. He couldn't have looked more proud… or more eager to be ravaged.

My strong thighs clutched against his torso. A sexy Mata Hari with the thighs of a goddess - awaiting what was worth waiting for – the kill. A huntress and lover joined in one purpose. That purpose swept through me, washing in like a flood. I let it saturate me. Color me. Consume me.

"Edward, tell me what you want." Even Iwas turned on by the siren's voice that silked past my lips. I could feel how fully aroused he was; I wanted him badly too.

"Bella, you know what I want," he said completely on fire, in a barely-voiced whisper. He rubbed my legs, eyes bold, sliding his hands up to widen my thighs with broadened palms.

"I want you to say it…" I whispered in-kind, moving his hands higher up my thighs with only light guidance from my fingertips.

Breath shuddering, still whispering, but in a louder tone than before, "I want to be inside you again… _feel_ you while I watch you… on me… taking control. Oh, Bella, I want to put my mouth all over you. I have to make you feel the way you make me feel every time I'm near you."

I exhaled out in a long feathery sigh, and ran my hands over my own body, rubbing the contours of my skin and rocking my hips - compelled to do so. Edward made a sound I never heard before, then leaned in and joined me in exploring my body.

Edward raised up, abdomen tensed, and kissed down my chin. He sampled my mouth, then my shoulders, while his hands surveyed the rest of me, moving lower and slower - so his fingers could sample from wines not yet poured.

I shuddered, so excited. I placed my hand on top of his and guided it up and down in the way I wanted - the way I liked it - while I pushed myself forward onto his hand. I looked at his face and found him smiling at my agony. He knew exactly how I wanted to be touched. He was teasing me.

I shivered as his fingers arrived at the seat of my pleasure, and his tongue found my ear with a strong voice. "Your body is so full for me, Bella." I pawed at his chest and arms softly, trying to remember my strength. "Lie back for me. Please."

Edward bent his knees creating a place for me to recline. I leaned back onto them and opened wide, giving him full access, once again, to my pleasure at his hands.

"God, just look at you." His fingers were doing things that I hadn't realized fingers could do. _And that is really saying something after our time in the blue room_.

Apparently he wanted to make sure I knew that his fingers had the address to my pleasure too. My body jerked like reflex points had been triggered.

"Edward… oh God… what are you doing to me?!" I was sure that I really would hurt him if I touched him, so I cut up the floor instead. It was marred from before anyway. Seriously, why would Esme bother to give newlywed vampires anything but a concrete bunker with steel cots?

"There, that's better," he said softly, with just a hint of revenge curving the corners of his mouth upwards. I realized then that the scoundrel had done that as payback for me inspiring him ruin the floor earlier.

"You rat!" I smiled viciously. He smiled deliciously. _Game. On._

I pried apart our intertwined limbs and stood up from his chest as graphically exaggerated and slowly as I could. "Be right back," I pealed cutely.

"What?!" Edward looked and sounded like I imagine I used to every time he pulled away from me. That was just a bonus.

I darted over to the front door where I'd tossed the silver stilettos Alice had me wearing when I woke up. I returned and dangled the satin heels like a trophy, then swiftly hooked them to my feet.

He looked so thrown off. Edward did not have his usual composure. "I think it would be safe to say that you are seducing a vampire _now_, wouldn't you agree? Terribly premeditated."

"Oh no, heavens no, never that… I just thought if we were going to do this… we should _**do**_ this..." the bell in my voice rang low and hypnotic. _I felt like a bad ass._

"Okay, _now_ I'm afraid. Who are you and where is my wife?"

Edward was _so_ not afraid. He was grinning like he had the best Christmas present ever.

In a tenth of a second, the perfect response came to me. And with another tenth of that same second I executed it. I flew to stand directly over him, with my legs wide-set, while he lay on the floor under me and took in a view I hoped he would remember for a very long time.

"Where's your wife? Your wife's on top this time, remember?" I said it as cool as a fan. I heard him swallow hard. I had a plan to lower myself down onto him so slowly, his eyes would melt.

Edward apparently made plans of his own. "Then on top she shall be."

In one swift vampire shift, he was off his back and crouching under me, kneeling – kissing and licking a trail from my ankle upwards. When he reached the end of his journey, he inhaled deeply and nuzzled me. He explored me with his fingers and tongue, grasping my calves alternately with the hand not in service to his mission. The angle of his approach forced his tongue so deeply into me.

I was not equipped to handle this. Nor was I equipped to handle the reflection I saw of us in a floor-legnthed mirror. The visual carried almost as much power as feeling it. But I stayed standing. Mostly driven by not giving him the satisfaction of me collapsing.

"Bella, I have to taste your little pearl. It's so full… so full for me… I have to…" His voice was shuddering, bound_. _I heard him hiss and knew what 'taste' was going to mean.

"Ahhh… ahhhh!" I cried out as Edward grazed and gently bit this place he had only ever been very nice to. He chased the white-hot sensation with a salving tongue. _God help me. _

I sucked in hard through my teeth, icy pleasure-pain still shooting through me in reaction. Tender, exquisitely sensitive, throbbing and tickling filled the space. Electric flashes popping all over me. Images of how incredibly erotic we looked in the mirror swarmed my mind and made the overwhelm complete.

He paused, wondering if I was really hurt, "No… don't stop!" I tangled my hands in his hair, and moved his face back in towards me. He did not resist.

He groaned with delight and continued on until I could neither metaphorically nor literally stand anymore, even assisted by his strong shoulders.

We fell backwards, with Edward holding my waist, guiding me down onto… his tongue. His hands, still on my waist, slid me up and down, explaining what he wanted me to do.

_I refused to make the space in my mind to contemplate the image - that would have surely have deranged me. _

Absently, I growled at the top of my lungs while my hips began to undulate to his rhythm, obedient to his instruction. He braced my movements with his arms and his mouth. He shook his face from side to side, dancing my body.

Not finding any reasonable target for my hands to annihilate, I balled up my hands into fists to prevent them from scratching Edward.

Somehow miraculously in all of this, I found presence of mind to deny myself submission to the feelings. Somehow in the midst of this lush engulfment of sensory, I found the will to not allow the lapping waves of pleasure that his tongue offered me to be my exit. I didn't want it to end this way. I knew what I wanted. _I wanted the real thing._

"Enough," I hissed in a trembling whisper, "enough."

Edward heeded my breathy assertion and stopped completely, causing a dull and dizzying heat to rip through me. He released the hold he had on my thighs, since he knew by my frayed tone why I said it.

Edward slid me backwards to his lap. His eyes were heavy with their yearning. Developing a plan to manage my excesses, Edward reached out to hold my hands. As he opened my tightly-coiled fists, we both gasped at the deep gouges I'd caused in my palms. I hadn't even felt or noticed pain, until the air hit them. That did not feel good. I sat still, waiting for the terrible stinging to pass.

Edward shook his head with a saddened face. He kissed the wounds while they rapidly burned away to nothingness. There was a grief in his eyes, even though my hands were now perfectly fine.

"Just hurt _me,_ love, don't do that to yourself, please. I can't bear to see that," he said, still kissing and nursing my now completely well hands.

My heart space melted away all the antagonism I'd planned for Mr. 'There, That's Better.' He was still kissing my hands and working up to my wrists. "Just hurt me."

His eyes were uncertain and tentative… kind, yet hungry. We both had intentions to be anything but soft right now, and yet here we were.

We were once again full to the brim with an adoring love and an aggressive appetite. Then we became decided. We both chose the love. He was so moved that I hurt myself in efforts to make sure I didn't hurt him. And I was still at a lost for the generous way that my husband loved me, begging me to hurt him instead.

He smiled so warmly, lacing our fingers together, that I'd nearly forgotten I was supposed to break his spirit. _Oh well, death by stilettos would be just as awesome on another day._

He positioned me onto him with such care. It felt so good, so right… and _so _hot, to feel him take his hands and push himself into me, penetrate me. Loving eyes piercing into each other while he pierced into me. _To have Edward back inside of me… there could be no greater pleasure._

I kissed him softly and began swinging my hips. Slowly. All at once, I knew I was home. All the fear left me. I leaned into him deeply, our eyes filled with mutual love, and let his presence and his body fill me completely. Mold me to them. Edward sighed hard.

I suddenly realized that all this time, we had still been completely focused on me. This was the first "selfish" satisfaction he'd ever had. To let his wife make love to him. I wanted to make it very special for him. My generous husband. So selfless. I wanted to give him my all… just as he had given me so many times now.

I noticed that whenever my hips came around to the front, he seemed to moan the strongest, so I exaggerated my movements there to bring him more pleasure, moving myself in a little wave that looked like a belly dancer.

He closed his eyes, unable to bear the eye contact and the sensations at the same time. I leaned in and kissed his eyelids, and then caressed his cheeks while I kept us strong.

"I love you, Edward."

"I love you more, my Bella."

I was focused completely on him, completely on loving him and making him the star of this moment. His body felt incredibly good to me, to be sure, but my thoughts of myself were only secondary to giving him delight.

_Another level of insight in this epiphany._ Not only had he been focused on me, his pleasure was secondary to mine.

This had been Edward all of this time, so focused on me, even during our first time just now after the change. I was so humbled, so very humbled by his love.

His body shared with me more eloquently than his words. His eyes told me this was the most loved he ever felt in his life. His kisses told me he felt safe and deeply cared for. His grip told me how grateful he was for me and how completely he trusted me. From his shivers I learned that the most sensitive place on his body was just under his ribs on either side. His protective caresses told me I was the most important thing in his life there could ever be.

_Except for maybe our beautiful daughter._

I was completely full with the thought that we made her. That our love made her. Our union of love and kindness for each other conceived her. I swear I felt my heart beat as I watched him give himself to me, perfectly surrendered to my care now.

We settled into a steady flow… and then it got so good. It was a slow-building burn - a momentum thick and sweet like honey. It was a stable kind of passion that didn't murder, but certainly did kill. We moved in slow motion, while he called out my name in earnest whispers.

I could also now see why Edward really didn't need his medical degree or mind-reading to love me so thoroughly. He simply had to hear what my body told him.

I listened intently to his. To the way he arched his back, to the volume changes of his sounds, to the intensity of his grip on my bottom, and to the primal throbbing of his body. Then I followed them all like breadcrumbs leading to his fulfillment.

The room was full of love, and it was a beautiful thing when he let go and I tasted his mouth. Edward gave himself to me with open eyes, in riveted waves. I kissed his hand and rubbed it against my face, and I kept going until he closed his eyes.

-- --

I was about to climb off and lay beside him but he stopped me, holding my sides. "Wait, Bella. I haven't taken care of you yet. I can't have my amazing wife unreciprocated, not when she's been so good to me."

He said it softly, then closed his eyes again, he was not yet finished savoring his moment. But his magnificent body, as I could attest to with first-hand accounting, was already more than ready to engage me.

_I should get God a fruit basket or something._

"Bella, I love you so much, and my love for you grows with each passing moment."

"I couldn't love you more if I tried."

He ran the back of his hand down across my cheek. I kissed it, giving each of his fingers affection. Edward touched his index finger to my lips, tracing them. I kissed his finger with relish. Then I opened my mouth slightly to allow it in, to suck it. Edward's breathing took a marked turn for the worse.

It would be dishonest if I said I hadn't thought about what it would be like to have Edward in my mouth. I would be lying if I said that I was not curious, or that I did not want to give him the kind of unbearable bliss he has given me.

I took his entire finger into my mouth, allowing myself to imagine that it was not his finger. I wanted him to join me in this imagining, so I opened my eyes to include him, tracing his knuckles with my tongue, allowing my mouth to fill with venom. Dragging my tongue between his fingers, just like he licked me.

I next took his middle finger into his mouth. His breathing was pronounced and hoarse. His eyes were an excited shade of dark caramel.

"... Oh, no... oh, God... Bella."

I laid down to his chest, still sucking his finger, letting my hair tickle and dust against his chest to state my intentions, to give him the idea of what it would feel like if he felt my hair tickling down his torso while I took my lips to places as yet uncharted.

I was ready, I wanted this.

I pulled my knees forward to get off of him, and just as I did, Edward once again held my waist and stopped me from moving.

"Wait Bella, I'm not… I'm not ready... for _that_…"

I was confused. I could certainly feel that he was not uninterested - as I still had current, intimate knowledge of my destination.

"What I mean to say is… Bella, I'm just not prepared for you to do that."

"Of all the antiquated…! … So you can do all of that to me… but I can't put my mouth on your..."

He put a finger over my lips, unable to bear the thought of my saying it, apparently as much as me trying to perform it.

"It's just different."

"How on earth is it different?"

"Bella, I'm supposed to pleasure you, to satisfy you."

"I married a sexist… I did not see that coming…"

"No, Bella, will you listen to me… I just never thought of us that way. I just meant to say that I am so lucky to have you… I wanted to do anything I could imagine to make you feel good."

"And you don't think I might feel the same?"

"But you don't need to. You are incredible. I love the way you love me. Bella, I am such a happy man. I don't expect anything else. I don't need anything else."

"What's the real reason? What… you're scared you'll think less of me?"

"No, I could never think differently about you… I'm just… Bella, It's so hard for me to walk this line between the human that I was and the vampire appetites that I have now. I would never want to demean you. You're my wife. I adore you."

"You're overthinking things, as usual. Besides, you didn't ask me to do it."

"Yes, I usually do have to be the voice of reason."

I was a little angry now, but mindful to stay in control. "Yeah, _your _version of reason. Here we are, both vampires now, and yet there are still parts of intimacy with you that you would deny me. Why is that?! Why won't you just let go and enjoy your life already. I _know_ you want it."

"I just need… time… It never occurred to me that you would be willing to… or want to. I mean… I can't even express how... flattered I am."

"Then why won't you let it happen?"

He looked down, unwilling to provide any answer.

"Look, I know you were born at a time when exposed ankles were considered foreplay." He rolled his eyes. "But intimacy between two adults who love and respect each other and _want_ to explore is normal and natural."

"Bella, please try to understand, this is just more than I imagined of you…You with the shoes standing over me earlier near enough killed me. This is all moving so fast. I love that you are so adventurous. Your're wonderful… I'm just not…"

"'Ready,'" we said at the same time, me talking over him… "Yeah, I heard that. You know, Edward, 'ready' can be a choice."

It wasn't like Edward to be this inarticulate or to refuse me anything in the realm of what he could give me – which this was. I knew he was struggling. But he was the one causing the problem. He closed his eyes, not sure of how to help the moment. I knew he was taking a pause to let me calm down. I could feel my anger starting to deepen.

I was so frustrated with this man I loved so much. I would never want to push him beyond his limits, but this was just us, just between us. Besides, I wasn't trying to shove bamboo picks under his nails, I was just trying to love him.

And what's more I KNOW he wanted it; I heard his breathing. I felt his body. Yet he would deny himself… and in so doing, deny me.

The rejection partnered itself with frustration and hurt. I remembered why everyone was scared of my temper's potential. In one powerful rush, all of my longings for him, my desires for him, surged in. It comingled with my anger at his denial of me as a powerful sexual creature - attempting to imprison me onto some pedestal.

All of a sudden, I was scary mad and for no particular reason. _I felt irreparably out-of-control. _My awareness of it did nothing at all to curtail it in the slightest. As it mixed itself with my sexual hunger, and as I pleaded inside my mind to God to help me not hurt Edward, the strangest thing happened, it awakened a sexual _Presence_ in me just thrilling to be released. I invited it forward. I knew immediately who this was. This was _my _monster and she just spoiling for the chance to change Edward's mind about who the real me was.

With fury brewing inside me wild enough to match my eyes, I started to stroke into Edward again, but I no longer made love to my husband. I sexed my mate.

In a steep grind with sharp thrusts, I exaggerated every toss of my hips into him and clenched onto him hard enough to bruise his ego and his body.

Edward's eyes and mouth flew open wide. "Bella!"

As soon as he could process it, he figured it out.

At first, I think he intended to calm me down. He tried to appear unaffected, save for heavy breaths; but his face spoke traitorously as his inner wild was bringing him around to my way of seeing things.

Another thrust and I had him, and he knew it. Edward's hands were now all over me, urging me on.

I shared some of my thoughts with him.

"This is for refusing me what is mine."

Edward groaned so darkly at my words and deeds - so thrilled and impressed. It angered me worse. A painting jumped off the wall.

"_THIS_ is for biting me." A stone in the floor popped loose from the mortar. A sneer was threatening in the corner of his mouth. _I couldn't help wondering if I'd come off that pedestal yet._

"_THIS_ is for teasing me." The floor cracked down a fault line that had mysteriously formed in the mortar. Edward hissed and bared his teeth. I glared at him, daring him to challenge me. He backed down. I grinned and licked my lips at him.

"And _this… THIS _is for denying me any part of you." I used my hips to enunciate my words.

"Oh, shi… Bella! Oh God!" Edward roared and tried to rise up again. I kept him pinned until he stopped fighting against me, totally spent.

I laid on his neck, grazing it just a little as my prize. Edward hissed, startled, then chuckled. He shook his head and sighed. I released my hold on him completely when I heard him sigh.

That was a big mistake.

Without disturbing our connection, he rolled us over and pinned my hands over my head with one hand, leaving his other free for mayhem. I could have easily fought him… but I didn't want to… I really liked the mayhem.

_Famous last words._

"My turn…"

He grinned at me condescendingly. I knew he was bringing his A game. I promised myself I would bear it quietly and not give him the satisfaction of flipping out.

But it was over before it started. _Silly Bella shall be mindful not to incite vampires who have been celibate for over a hundred years. _

"_This_ is for making me want you so much that I almost tore down a school to get to you... _La tua cantante_." The Italian sounded so vulgar in his mouth. But it was civilized compared to his ribald behavior. I loved it.

The feelings were just so ridiculously intense, so dangerously good that I considered trying to provoke him further– but just for an insane suicidal second… until he got wilder all on his own.

"_This_ is for all the nights you called my name in your sleep and I didn't let myself do a thing about it." He darted licks across my lips while he fingered his little 'pearl' and rolled his hips in the same design. _Serious trouble._

"_This_ is for every time you push me… and I refuse you… you just keep pushing me to my limit… you make me so… oh, God Bella… I don't ever want to say no to you… don't you understand that?!"

_Apparently he could enunciate with his hips too. _

"Oh, God! Ohhhhhhhhhhh… oh, Edward." I couldn't bear it silently any more. The pleasure was just too strong. But it didn't matter.

The coup de grâce was at hand.

"… Oh and _this_… _THIS_ is for Jacob Black..."

_Edward Cullen _left the building. His monster had finally been allowed to make my acquaintance.

Maybe it would have been better if I had just let the experience swallow me whole instead of resisting it. My brain had lost the ability to govern anything by that point anyway. By the time Edward stopped, I was literally in a catatonic state, still periodically shivering. Edward looked quite pleased with himself, whereas I was concerned I might never form complete sentences, or even words, ever again.

"Wha… hoh..." I stopped trying to talk and just pushed out air.

"Sorry, love, I didn't quite catch that," he gloated, leaning in, pretending like he was straining to hear me, while he twirled one of my shoes on his finger.

"Ass." _Huh, turns out I could make words._

"Fair enough." He slid down, and kissed and caressed mine with amusement across his face. My body twitched again.

"You… you…" J_ust maybe not sentences yet._

"I'm sorry, darling. I _still_ didn't quite catch that."

I growled for real and attacked him playfully with kisses that were much sweeter and tamer than our last ones. Edward laughed in unbridled joy. I threw my leg over his and held him close.

He put his arm around me and leaned his face against mine.

I broke the mellow silence first. "Yeah… you realize this isn't over."

"No, I didn't imagine it was," he said wistfully, eyes closed. "By the way, you're not getting those shoes back. They're a bad influence on you."

"Meaning I can have them back when I win them from you."

"Yes, ma'am." I sighed at the villain.

"Alice will object."

"_Alice_ will survive. Or you could keep the peace and have them back as a thank you for not making me leave you tonight to go check out the meadow. It's your choice."

"No dice. We're going tonight."

"I'm not sure I want you in our meadow in this state. The flora and fauna are not safe around you right now."

"Hah! Look who's talking!"

I changed tactics and looked at him with sad little eyes. I had no dignity left at this point anyway. _The man had taken my Mata Hari shoes!_

"Must you be so adorable?" he sighed.

"I know… I know," I said with fake compassion, "but look at it like this, the faster you go… the faster we can get back to you giving me my shoes."

Edward just shook his head.

He stood up, lifting me in his arms as he rose. He carried me over to the bed and laid me down gently onto it. "Welcome home, Bella." He kissed me on the lips so kindly. "Now, do you think you can behave while I'm gone?"

"That all depends."

"On?"

"On how you expect me to behave."

"I'm throwing those shoes in the river."

"Do that and you'll have two very angry brunette vampires after you. "

"I can buy one off… and the other I rather like angry." He slid his hand over my stomach.

I turned my head. "To the meadow with you."

"Are you sure you wouldn't just rather…"

"Mea-dow!" I gestured emphatically in a fake sign language.

He smiled, enchanted with me, as he stole one more kiss. "I love you so much, Bella."

He turned and walked towards the closet to get some new clothes, as the last ones were now no more than car chamois.

I rushed to his side to hold his hand. "Always."


	3. Chapter 3 The Meadow Double Chapter

**Beta: myimm0rtal on ****Twilighted** - Thank you! 

**Thanks also to horizon77 for helping me keep Bella IC.**

*****All characters, settings, and concepts are the property of Stephenie Meyer.**

**THIS STORY MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.**

* * *

**The Cottage 'til Dawn - Chapter 3, The Meadow**

Edward kissed me with such fondness, cupping my face and lingering softly against my lips.

"I'll be back in half an hour, maybe just a little longer," he turned towards the closet for new clothes.

"What? That long?" I whined.

He was now dressed and back to my side. "To do a proper check, I'll need to surveillance many miles in each direction."

"When did this become a Secret Service operation?"

"When you moved to the far top of the food chain."

"But that's too long to be away from you."

"I know, love. That's why I'd initially suggested another night… but I will go as fast as I can." A sweet peck sealed his words.

"Okay, how about this… you get a head start of about fifteen minutes, and if something is off, you'll have time to intercept me."

"I'm afraid that won't work. It's too much of a risk. You should be accompanied by one of us every time you leave… until you're absolutely sure you can handle your thirst consistently.

"But judging by the way you resisted the hikers today and Renessmee and um… Jacob - even though that's just more a matter of good taste - I would say this is more of a formality and you'll be ready to travel on your own in no time."

Edward cringed as he said Jake's name, more than usual, just a little hesitant to remind me of earlier.

"By the way, are you thirsty right now?" he asked conscientiously.

"Edward, I know I'm new to the whole 'proper care and feeding of your vampire' thing… but I thought you guys only hunted, like, every few days. Is this a newborn thing, or an Edward fretting over Bella thing?"

He smiled sheepishly. "A bit of both, probably. It's not that I need you getting any stronger, heaven knows. But you'll notice the sensation in your throat pretty much all the time. And until you get used to it, it can be…unsettling." He looked uncomfortable, asking me with his eyes if I hated him for this.

I tousled his hair reassuringly. "I'm okay, really I am." The burning was certainly there in the background, asserting itself, but not unmanageable, "Hey, we'll figure out… the details… together, deal?"

A grateful smile broke free. "Thank you, my love. Which reminds me, I have something for you." He took back off for the closet.

"Some clothes… some underwear… my shoes…?"

Edward chuckled from inside the closet at my not-so-subtle hints.

A rapid fire of things flew at me as my reflexes instinctively caught them each with ease and accuracy: one of Edward's oxford shirts, a pair of his boxers, and one of his t-shirts. And then a small beaded pouch.

He walked out smiling. "Sorry love, I'd been enjoying the view so much that it never occurred to me you might like something else to wear also. I hope that these will do for now. Let's try to locate your clothes in the morning…unless you'd like to see something in an evening gown."

"Uhhh, no. And this is just perfect, actually. They smell like you," I cooed. "But um, I don't think my shoes fit in this little pouch deal."

"Love, I do believe you remember the terms of that particular arrangement." He seductively traced my shoulder with his fingertip.

I pulled away and sighed dramatically while putting on his clothes… placated by his scent against my skin, but pretending to be grumpy. "Okay, so what's in here?"

"A gift… now please don't make that face. It's new, but I hope you will accept it anyway. It's… a thank you, for being willing to… 'figure out the details' of this life with me, for me."

I kissed his cheek softly, then turned my attention back to the pouch.

It was small, champagne-colored, and silk brocade with a drawstring closure. It had long topaz bugle beads and teardrop briolettes fringing the bottom. And it was burdened too heavy for its delicateness by whatever was inside.

"The little purse was my mother's, but what it holds is new – from me to you, with help from Esme and Alice."

Inside the bag was a small white envelope and a red velvet jeweler's box tied with a honey golden ribbon. I glared at him as I slowly lifted them both from the pouch.

"Be nice." He smiled cutely, completely unwilling to feel remorse for his certain-to-be extravagance.

The envelope contained a white notecard square in Edward's elegant script:

"_Bella, my dearest,_

_Thee forever, I'll adore._

_I will cherish thee for all time._

_I will love thee evermore._

_-E"_

Of course I was now willing putty in his hands. I would have accepted the Hope Diamond cheerfully. What I saw inside would have taken my breath away - if I still relied upon it. What I saw was more beautiful and special than any boring old Hope Diamond because of the meaning it imparted.

Inside the box was an oval locket of gold, in almost the exact dimensions and color of my engagement ring. It had intricate carvings on both sides, and ornate and gorgeous filigree work along the bale and edges. Clearly the work of a master artisan. On one side was the picture of a lamb and a lion laying alongside one another. The other side was identical except instead of the lamb, there was a second lion.

I swelled with joyful feelings – his recognition that he loved me then at his mercy and he loved me now at his side - vulnerable no more.

On the inside of the lamb/lion shell, the inscription read: "_8/13/06 – My Wife - As I Love You, Everlong._" On the inside of the lion/lion side: "9_/13/06 – My Life – As I Love You, Evermore._"

My face mellowed into softness and humility. I would not have believed I wasn't crying if I didn't know for a fact that I couldn't. "I don't know what to say. It's perfect. Thank you... thank you."

He was quite pleased and glowing with my approval and acceptance of the gift. "I had this commissioned long before we were married… once you were certain that you would make this choice. Everything has been complete on the locket, except the sentiments inside, since the week before our wedding.

"After you became… ill..." he looked pained by even the mention of it "…in my despair, I'd forgotten - well pushed it back in my mind. But Esme reminded me of it – she thought it was important that I have something positive to cling to during your last week before labor. I sent it back to the jeweler to complete the engraving, foolishly willing that my desire to present this to you would be enough to get you through. Besides, it was good that it went because it would have been too cruel to have it around if things had not… gone well."

Edward looked down and took a near-imperceptible pause, pushing down his pain and fear of almost losing me and Renessme all in one day. I touched his cheek. He quickly recovered to a smile and resumed his story.

"But then I heard your heart beat-" his face lit up like the rising sun "-and I was overjoyed knowing you would be alright and that I would get to give this to you, in a moment such as this one.

"While you were… changing… Esme called the shop as soon as your change date came to Alice. She and Alice went and picked it up for me just yesterday."

"Edward, this is so beautiful. _**You**_ are so beautiful. Again, thank you. Thank you, so much." I clasped his face and kissed him dearly. "Would you please put it on me?"

"It would be my great pleasure." Edward smoothed my hair behind my ears, and kissed a trail from my forehead to my nose, then to my lips, while he fastened it. "Evermore, my Bella."

"Thank you." Another kiss.

"I'm just so pleased that you like it so much, and that you have accepted it."

"Yes, and I will even resist the urge to ruin the moment by taking pot shots at your sister for this slanderous change date – even though it is clearly off by two days – out of, you know, deference to your wonderful gift."

"You are _too_ magnanimous. Have I mentioned yet tonight that you are incorrigible?"

"You know, I don't believe that you have."

Edward shook his head, fighting back a grin, really hard.

"By the way, you look quite fetching in my shirt. I think we should just forgo ever locating your things. The way I see it, you won't really have much need of them anyway." He smiled deviously, sliding his hands underneath my loaner shirt, caressing me softly and sensually, moaning softly.

In a blink, I was wrapped around him as impolitely as I had been when I woke up and first kissed him. We both simultaneously broke away from each other in discipline, saying in tandem, "Meadow!" Edward mimicking his estimation of my voice, after me actually saying it in the same manner. I smacked his bottom for mocking me, and then grabbed him up quickly again to me for yet another passionate kiss.

"Okay, I'll be back to you as fast as I can. Please make sure your phone is on so I can reach you quickly if I have to. And obviously, please feel free to call me. And there's emergency blood in the refrigerator. And please… please, _try_ to be good, love?"

"Listen to you… you sound like a parent nervous to leave the kid home for the first time."

"Well, you are my little newborn." I rolled my eyes, but then gave in to the sweetness of his affection with a smile.

"I'll miss you so much. Hurry back to me."

"Mrs. Cullen, I miss you already."

One last kiss and the door shut behind him. I rushed to and leaned my back against the door and listened for a good minute to his footsteps swiftly treading the soft earth under him. I listened for as far as I could hear – until he jumped the river. Then silence.

I was so lonely for him already.

The phone rang, and it was Edward. _He misses me too, yay!_

"Are you being good?"

"Later, I'll be _better_."

"Bella, don't do that… because if you do, I'll be forced to turn around and come back home…"

"And why is that a bad thing?"

"Because you will be disappointed and possibly angry if we don't go to the meadow tonight."

In a low, shimmering, seductive whisper, "I thought you liked me angry."

He sighed softly. "You will be the cause when I hit a tree."

"What if I said that I was still thinking about earlier?"

"Bella …"

"What if I said that I _**really**_ liked you like that?"

_Flashbacks rushed to the forefront – they'd never left my head – recalling him – recalling his monster flipping me over onto my knees and taking me from behind; splaying my body to his designs. One hand wrapped around me teasing me, tantalizing me - so roughly, so ecstatically - while his other, also wrapped around me, fondled … elsewhere - all as he bade me to watch it – thrusting and grinding into me - facing us to the mirror. His eyes searing with murderous lust from over my shoulder – exorcising the ghost of Jacob Black. My red eyes burning ablaze were still not the wildest eyes in that mirror. _

"What if I said that right now I was thinking about the way you pinned yourself against me and made me watch what you did to me. And what if I said that it was too much to bear thinking about it and that I might have to … _do_ something… about it."

Edward's racing footsteps came to a complete stop.

His voice was now much lower and more sensual. "… Bella, you have GOT to stop. I'm now out here running through the forest in a most… inappropriate…condition. Now _please_ stop or **so help me** I will come home and _really_ give you something to miss."

"Here again, is that supposed to dissuade me somehow?"

He sighed and ignored me. "Just promise me that you will not… doanything…without me."

"Yeah, yeah, solidarity."

He laughed softly now. "I'll go quickly, love, I promise. But I'm actually going to hang up now because I fear that somehow you will reduce my capacity to focus properly if I stay on this call."

"Coward."

He laughed softly and spoke like velvet, "... said the woman who was her on knees begging for mercy… and **screaming** my name." He drug out the e in screaming. A flood of fire shot through me, but my vampire capacity quickly filed it away.

"Well, that's pretty rich coming from the man running through the woods right now with a wood--"

"Alright… that's _my_ cue, " Edward interrupted hastily. "I'm going now before you say something that_I_ will regret. I love you. Incorrigible."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

I laid in the sheets, indulging myself, wrapped up in their richness, reminiscing on the entire night.

I was SO hot for Edward, I ran my hands across my thighs, imagining that it was his strong hands… But I pulled away; I promised him I wouldn't. Plus, he was away only because he was trying to make me happy, so I'd wait since he had to wait. _Fine._

I decided to make myself busy by cleaning up and repairing the living room. That took all of eleven seconds. Well, for what could be fixed… the floor was beyond help. I grimaced at the thought of our family helping us repair this and someone asking what happened.

_Oh Lord, Emmett. _

_Perhaps I'll just relocate this lovely rug, then we won't need to repair the huge crack in the floor. __And I'll just put skis on the baby when she starts walking._

With that problem responsibly solved, I next decided I would take on the closet and see if I could make sense of it. It was seriously bigger than half of the shops in Port Angeles. The Ark of the Covenant was probably in a crate in here somewhere.

I located my jewelry box fairly easily. It was placed atop a table in the dressing area of the closet – which, for the record, was an area larger than the baby's room.

Rather than even go farther into the daunting eyeful that was the closet, I decided to cut bait and stop with my early success of the jewelry box. I sat in the dressing area's plush, comfy chaise with the box in my lap. Immediately upon opening it, my eyes found my charm bracelet.

As I thought back to that day in my old bedroom sobbing uncontrollably, when Edward had to comfort me while I was letting go of Jake, I marveled at how we all were now… and how the whole of the bracelet was no longer a part of me in the same way.

Jacob and I had made our final choices. Well, forces beyond us made them for us. I was compelled to be devoted to Edward. And apparently Jacob was now compelled to be devoted to my baby girl.

_It's a pity liquor is not meaningful in the vampire diet… getting drunk about that seems so reasonable._

I kissed the little wolf charm in a well-wishing of peace, then unhooked Edward's mother's diamond from its station on the bracelet. I released the bracelet and the wolf back into the box.

I clipped Edward's heart to the chain holding my new locket. His heart should be near my body at all times. His heart was clear, strong, and beautiful, enough to sustain us both forever.

I walked over to the mirror to look at my new jewelry and became fixated on my eyes. _Two _dark, scarlet rubies pouncing from behind lush, long lashes. I willed myself to look away from their hypnotic pull and down to my neck.

The heart looked absolutely perfect sitting slightly offset atop the locket. They looked so beautiful together. I knew Edward would love this too. This would be a nice surprise for him, but I wanted to do something more for him… _what could I do_?

I could get dressed up pretty… but in what? I looked around the closet again and Edward wasn't kidding; it was rack after rack of cocktail and formal wear. In three aisles, I hadn't seen one normal item. _Damn that pixie._

But then something caught my eye, hanging behind one of the double doors. "_Put this on. -Alice_."

_Okay, she's forgiven._

Inside a clear plastic garment bag was the prettiest little sundress - white with tiny blue flowers. I immediately tried it on, along with the matching underwear she provided. It was perfect. _You've gotta love that crazy little pixie, you really do._

Even the terrible eyes did not scare away how happy I was feeling with my reflection in the mirror… and how happy I would be for Edward to see me, and undress me from this… then an even more perfect thing to wear came to me… my wedding dress! I could put the gown on for Edward before he got back.

But just exactly in that moment, the front door opened. _Sigh._

Could it be possible a half hour had gone already?

Almost as if he read my mind, he called out, "Eighteen minutes! Love, your mischievous mind is an excellent motivator. Are you dressing? Shall I wait for you out here?"

_Edward's home! I could be happy for that at least. I'll just have to think of what to do about the wedding dress._

I walked out in the little sundress quite proud. "You are always free to come and find me, whatever I have on… or don't."

He looked so smitten. "You are a vision." His eyes caught the heart gleaming from its new location. His mouth dropped to a soft gape.

"Do you like the new addition?"

"Like is not the right word." He was smiling my favorite crooked smile.

"It was time that my heart be where it belongs for all of eternity. Don't you agree?"

"I couldn't agree more… I would have never asked you to do that, but I love that you have." Edward swept me off my feet and kissed my lips and then the heart.

"The night is quite beautiful out. Shall we go, my darling? Are you ready?"

"Has the forest been satisfactorily Bella-proofed?"

He smiled brightly. "To the highest standards appropriate for the 'proper care and feeding of your vegetarian vampire.'"

I kissed his cheek. "Alright, let's roll, Cullen!"

He laughed. "Right. I'll just get a blanket."

"Because one or more of us will be cold?"

"Because one or more of us might like some privacy."

"Two of us with supernatural hearing, but he's worried about being caught unawares..."

"I will guard your exquisite body jealously for all of existence. I'm not taking any chances."

"I think if someone did catch us, seeing your wife naked would probably be the least of his concerns about your wife, wouldn't you agree?"

"Again… a man seriously might not mind if you were his death dealer." A proud grin widened across his face.

I rolled my eyes and tugged him by his shirt to the door.

Edward shut the door behind us and took my hand.

He pointed out the general direction. "We'll go that way for about sixty clicks. After about two minutes, you'll see a ridge with blue striations. We will break hard to the west, just past it. Are you ready, love?"

I smiled patronizingly. "Yeah, sweetie… I don't speak Ranger."

He scowled bitterly, refusing to laugh at me, and shook his head. "Oh you…just follow me."

Then we were off.

We ran at exhilaratingly high speeds through the forest, me along side him, doing my tumbleset thing. "Wooo hoooooo!" I giggled and shouted like a kid discovering how to get the swing to go really high.

Edward laughed a deep, hearty laugh, delighted with my amusement. I listened to the sounds of the rich night, reveled in its heady scent, and marveled as the dewy ground kissed my bare feet.

_Freedom and aliveness more than I have ever known. _

I laughed at the top of my lungs while I leveraged a majestic silver fir to catapult me over two hundred feet across the expanse. Edward dashed by just as I landed.

"Show off!" I said in a cranky, obnoxious tone.

"Look who's talking."

"Okay, well… then, let's race for real… ready…?"

"Bella…" he whined, pleading not to.

"… set…" He groaned at my call, but obliged me, stopping to take a starting block stance.

Of course that's when I shot off. "Suckerrrrrrrrrrr."

He sighed, faux–annoyed, and said softly, knowing that I would still hear him, "You never learn, do you?"

I giggled deliriously and ran and leaped as fast as I could. I tore and tore, and when I heard him rocketing to catch up to me, I kicked into high gear too. I was going to beat Edward!

I was so excited. I was so far ahead now I couldn't even hear him anymore. I, Bella, had run so far I actually couldn't even hear Edward anymore!

_I am so aweso-_… _what the_…!

Up ahead, a good mile yet, Edward leaned against a tree, arms folded, in a condescending 'I've been here all day' stance. _Damn it._

"Bella…" he said, still faux-annoyed.

"Yeah, yeah, you rule the world. I'm a loser…"

"Well, yes, that _is_ true…but what I was actually going to say was please don't run off tonight… we are safe where we are, but you worry me when you do that. What if there had been something out in that direction…"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I hadn't thought about that."

I leaned in to touch his face apologetically and then it dawned on me. _Hey wait a minute… he would have already scouted this area thoroughly, and knowing him, he'd gone out further than he needed to..._

Just as this kicked in for me, he darted away from me sideways, big grin on his face, turning, he took off running in a furious bolt. "…Fooooooool!"

"Cullen!!!"

"You shouldn't say it like it's an expletive, it's your name now too!"

"_That_ can be changed!"

"Ouch."

We took off giddy and free again, running with wild delight.

I finally caught up to Edward as he slowed down to a still-insanely-fast sprint, signaling that I should also slow down. We were nearly there. I could see it now. The space was lit as clearly as if the sun was blazing down upon it. I could smell the fragrance of our flowers too. We were finally here… our meadow.

This was the first time I looked on it with enhanced vision, and it was every bit more exponentially beautiful than I knew it before.

In the center of the clearing was a little stone arrangement about a yard in diameter. Celestial light made the stones seem to glow. As I moved in closer, I could see that colorful rocks and smooth pebbles of differing sizes comprised the border of a heart. Inside the heart was a single letter, a "B."

Lying across the "B," was a bouquet of wild flowers bundled in a familiar honey gold ribbon – the one that wrapped the locket's case.

His face was quite self-satisfied. I was in awe.

"Okay, maybe no divorce for you after all."

"I am relieved to hear that." His yummy crooked smile appeared again.

Edward picked up the bouquet and handed it to me, smiling. "For the fearless mother of my child, who fought for both of their lives. And for the eternal center of my heart, who fought for this future. I thank you, and I love you. And I will **never** cease to."

I again felt the impossible phantom tears welling up in my eyes.

"It's all so beautiful."

"Not like you, my love… May I have this dance with you, my darling?" His outstretched hand invited me to take hold.

Edward hummed my lullaby while we danced slowly under a velvet indigo sky twinkling with a thousand silvery stars. I was so much more fluid and graceful in my movements now, but I still longed to stand on his feet and let him dance us, so I did just that.

Edward clasped my waist with one hand while he touched my hair, lingering in it. He leaned in close to drink in my smell, placing his nose just under my ear. His humming tapered off, and he spoke.

"I don't know why you've chosen to love me like you do, Bella, but I shall be deeply grateful for it until the end of time. You have saved me in every way that a man can be saved." He kissed my forehead and my lips.

There was a tender silence between us as we rocked in place, with the rustling breeze and the calls of the night-birds as our music.

"Edward, I feel more at home with you than I have felt anywhere else. So don't thank me for making the choice for you… don't you see, there was no choice. I need you as much as you need me. I _have_ to love you. And I feel more loved by you than anyone should have the right to expect."

I placed my arm around Edward's neck and pulled his face down to mine.

The sweetness of the night air mingled our scents with the flavors of the flowers in our meadow. I was absolutely in a heaven beyond all describing.

Each kiss brought us closer to the love we'd come to make. I brought my hands down to unbutton his shirt. Edward gently searched my back for the top of the zipper on my dress. He gingerly took hold of the pull and lowered it slowly.

"You know, this will be the first time that we undress each other in a civilized manner." He smiled softly.

"We sort of have to… we have no other clothes." We both laughed silently, pushing air out of our nostrils. The moment was much too soft for anything more than that.

When I'd finished with the buttons on his shirt, Edward removed his hands from me, so that I could enjoy myself taking his shirt off. I took my time moving it down his strong, lean shoulders and arms, rubbing and caressing him.

He breathed so softly and closed his eyes. The shirt caught at his wrists and I lightly tugged at them, while kissing his shoulders and biceps through his t-shirt. Then I pulled the undershirt up as he playfully said, "Cheater."

"What… it's a set."

"Oh, I see." His voice was amused.

But I moved a little too quickly and ripped the soft cotton shirt a little. "Oops."

"You know, love, on second thought, perhaps we should just undress ourselves… keep the clothing carnage to a minimum, since we have no changes."

"Alright," I said, a little disappointed, but mollified by the view.

His broad, beautiful chest gleamed in the starlight, bathing him in a shimmering glow. My hands were all over his bare, magnificent chest. I was so dazzled, I would have agreed to anything.

His speaking snapped me out of my daze. "Mrs. Cullen, it's your turn; we are most unevenly attired at present."

"Here… I'll catch up." I pulled the sundress down gently and smoothed it past my hips. With just the subtlest hiss, the cotton dress fell upon the lush grass. Edward closed his eyes with relish of the sound, then opened them back to savor yet another winning combination from Alice… a beautiful, soft blue and white printed satin.

Edward smiled. "Mmmm, so gorgeous. Alas, now we are uneven again. Please allow me to rectify." Edward swiftly took off his shoes and socks. Then, with unfailing eye contact, he unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans - torturously, slowly - and stepped out of them.

Instead of responding like the hormone-riddled teen I was on the inside, I answered coolly, "You still look a little overdressed to me."

"Well, let me see what I can do about that." With a dirty grin and ready-to-please eyes, Edward took off his shorts.

_Yeah, God deserves a fruit basket, definitely._

I purred out a satisfied exhale. I bit my lips, eyes glued to him, not exactly making _eye_ contact.

Then off came my panties and bra. I put a little extra shimmy in my hips for him while I slipped off the tiny bikini. He didn't bother with eye contact either.

Edward breathed out deeply, "Oh, Bella," and continued to eye me up and down.

In an instant, I'd wrapped myself around him again. On my tip-toes, craning to nestle into his neck, I breathed him in, taking his hand into mine. "Make love to me, Edward."

My husband picked me up in order to reverently lower me to the ground.

I planted my lips firmly against his, and he planted his fingers deeply inside me. Plunging in and out intensely, and rubbing on me with the heel of his palm, he brought me to immediate release, and my body trembled.

I heard my voice echo though the forest as I continued to whimper and moan - because Edward continued to finger me, with my body still shaking. He kissed me, our tongues chasing each other in circles from inside my mouth.

As I lay there in the grass still shivering, Edward plucked a wild violet flower that was just beside us, and ran the petals lightly down the side of my face.

I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the feeling as he travelled lower and anointed my body with its tickling touch and subtle release of fragrance.

Lower yet, he ran the flower – across my belly and down between my thighs. I arched myself into his touch – as he traced every contour on me, right down through to the lines of my legs and toes. My body wriggled around, teased… and aroused... again.

Edward gently climbed on top of me and I found him with my hand and guided him in.

Edward entered me slowly, softly. I licked his lips, and he kissed mine.

"Oh, Bella, you're so wet… you're always _**so**_ ready for me... oh… my God."

"You do this to me, Edward. _You_ make me this way." I hooked my legs together behind his back, hoping he would realize what I was doing.

He did. "Your pretty legs… wrapped around me in the moonlight…ahhhh… thank you." He took a moment to drink that in and savor it.

His pace and his velocity increased. His voice was shaking. "Ohhhhh… Bella."

I clung my legs to him so tightly - to flex my strength a little, but not enough to hurt him. He brought one hand down to rub against my leg and followed it around his back as far as he could reach. He was desperate to touch all of my leg. His hips became freer.

I curled up to his ear. "I love you between my legs, Edward. I _love_ you in me. You make so… God. Don't stop. Please don't ever stop." I put my tongue in his ear and moaned.

It was the most beautiful and full feeling. The earth was soft and cool and alive. It felt like a soft chenille blanket underneath me. I became completely entranced. We locked eyes. Edward was right on top of me, so close in. We spoke nothing but said everything with intensity, honesty, and satisfaction. I gasped and smashed my fingers into the earth, shuddering as Edward deepened his strokes.

I raked my fingers up and down his back and through his hair. With the stars over his shoulders, and my ecstasy peaking again, I released in a powerful burst. Edward joined me.

When we returned from oblivion, he kissed me so passionately and devotedly yet again. We stared into each other's eyes for countless remarkable moments. We laid on our sides facing each other, his arm underneath my head like a pillow.

Edward reached over and pulled up the blanket to cover us. "Now you cover us? But the owls have already seen the best bits."

"That remains to be seen." He grinned, absolutely enamored, caressing my arm.

"What are you thinking about… if you want to tell me?" I asked, embarrassed at how curious I was.

"Many things, as you can now understand. But foremost in my mind is the first time we came here. I was so happy to spend time with you, and grateful to not have killed you. Much less to expect that wonderful kiss. I'm thinking about the way you looked. The way you treated me. You were never afraid of me, always fearless." He kissed me delicately, like I was still his human Bella.

"And you, my love, what are you thinking of? …if you want to share."

I was afraid he would ask me to reciprocate, sigh. I shouldn't have asked him.

"As you said, many things. But I am not entirely sure you want to know about the thought that is foremost on my mind. Tell me more about your remembrance of the first day here. It will help me to keep my human memory of it."

"Bella, of course I want to know anything that is on your mind, if you want to say, that is… what could you possibly think I wouldn't want to know abou- ah, _that_ again. I know I will regret asking this, but please love, help me understand why that is so important to you."

"I want to share this between us, to be everything to you that you have been to me. I want to give this to you. And also, I'm a little curious."

I looked down, somehow too shy to admit this to Edward's eyes, even though I'd been quite the total opposite of shy not even an hour ago. I knew I would be blushing if I still could. I felt a rush of sorts inside my skin.

I continued. "I want to know what it would be like to have you in my mou-" Edward put his finger up to my lips to silence me _again_. I frowned, but softened. I took his finger down peacefully. "…mouth. I want to have you in my mouth, Edward… taste you… and bring you this kind of pleasure that you so freely give to me. I'm not ashamed, why are you?"

"Bella…" he said quietly, looking down.

I gently brought his finger back up to my mouth, allowing it to resume its light press upon my lips and kissed it, then I put it in my mouth, lingering softly as I let it slide back out.

Edward forgot himself for just one moment, sighed, and pushed his finger deeper into my mouth.

Then he pulled away from me. "Bella, no… oh no. God, I didn't mean to… please, don't."

"Don't what… don't make you admit that you want it? "

Edward took a long, deep inhale through his nostrils. I smiled warmly, filled with concern for his nerves.

"Yes, I imagine this _is_ quite funny, your husband is a prude." He was hurting and humiliated. I took his hand in mine to console him.

"Edward, you are no prude. And you are never a joke to me. I wasn't laughing at you. Is that what you worry about? I would never think that of you, or ever laugh at you. Do you get that? I just don't understand… please help me understand why this is so hard for you."

"I just cannot imagine you doing that."

"Your gentlemanly nature is one of my favorite things about you. But the problem I think we are having is that you actually _can_ imagine it, you just don't want to, for some reason."

He looked down again. _Bingo._

"But what I still don't really get is **why** you're so hung up about this. You let me touch you with my hands all the time; don't you like the way I touch you?"

"Bella," he exhaled out long and nervous, " that's a complicated answer for me." His voice was soft. Torn. Afraid.

"This is me, Edward. It's just me. Tell me what's complicated."

"As I've told you, the person I was and the person I am now have very different… appetites. I find it difficult to integrate those sides of myself. I'm afraid of what I might show you of my darker nature. Afraid that I will lose my grip and cede to things Edward Masen would have abhorred.

"And that's just one part of it.

"There's also the fact that I've been in high schools and colleges off and on for about eighty years. And, as you might imagine, there is nothing more coarse and vile than the mind of the young adult male. Heaven knows I've tried to block them out. But I've nonetheless overheard their puerile machinations on thattopic. Many, many times. And mostly what I've experienced is their disdain for the women offering themselves this way. They mostly saw it as amusing to defile her or contraceptive convenience for them; and that was the excitement to them… cheating respect and intimacy… that and sullying her reputation. Bella, I just respect you too much to… gratify… myself like that at your expense."

"Well for starters, as you tell it, Edward Masen had no appetites, no passion beyond duty. But you _have _passion for me - as I have for you - so this is something different. This cannot compare.

"Also, it wouldn't be at my expense, I asked _you_… and you aren't demanding anything of me in a degrading way or something. Besides, you don't think it's wrong deep down, or you wouldn't have done it to me. Repeatedly."

"Well, that's different… it's just that I know my intentions for you."

"Could you say that again for me please?" My right eyebrow was raised as high as it would go. He sighed, knowing himself caught in his own words.

"Love, I know that your intentions are true, I just can't handle the thought of you… your beautiful mouth… upon me, like that." He took in a sharp, unnecessary breath, and exhaled out shaken, clearly entertaining the thought, and enjoying it, right then, as he spoke.

"But you could just stop making up problems and just let it happen, Edward. It's just me and you. No one has to know. So how could it be disrespectful if it's just us?"

"Bella…"

"Just be honest. I know the thought of it turns you on. Admit it." I said it so softy.

"Bella…"

"Edward, tell me you don't want it. Tell me you that haven't yet wasted enough time feeling walled off… denying yourself any pleasure."

"Bella, please…"

"Then deny it, Edward. Look in my eyes and deny that you would want to feel _this..._" I let venom fill my mouth and placed the first joint of his middle finger in my mouth. He did not pull away.

In a softer voice I said, "Deny that you would want to feel my mouth completely surrounding you, for your pleasure. Knowing that you respect me and that it could be a very beautiful gift from me to you… and no one has to know but us. It's just you and me."

Soft, conflicted, and starting to cave, he said, "God.. what can I deny you, Bella? What can I ever deny you?"

_The beginning of the end._ I closed my eyes, relieved. Then I opened them to look in his eyes. "I won't take this from you as my wish, Edward. I can't. As much as I want to give this to you, you have to choose this. You have to say that you want it."

He was conflicted still. "How could I not want everything from you, Bella, that you would willingly give to me? I just feel like I've taken too much from you already… But you tempt me, oh how you excite me so."

He reached out to rub my body. I caught his hands. _I was on a mission._

Softly, but still pushing him out past his comfort zone, I pressed further.

"But, Edward, do you _want_ this?" The siren's call in my voice was laced with powerful magic.

"Oh, my wife… since you first offered me, it has tortured every inch of my mind and my principles… yes, I do… yes, Bella, I do." He looked down, in conflict about what he's just admitted to. His breath was ragged.

I waited for his eyes, smiled and nodded consent. "And I want to give it to you… as much as you would like." I kissed him slowly with a probing intense tongue. He was so fully and completely aroused. I grasped him lovingly and began rubbing him. His breath raced.

I met his eyes again with desire and reassurance. "Right now." He shuddered, and nodded timidly.

I took one last kiss from his mouth and slowly slid down his body. I laid my head against where is heart would be. Just for a moment, I needed to be near it, speak my love directly to it. I offered a precious kiss to it with a silent prayer for his fulfillment.

I kissed a line down his neck to his chest licking and softly tracing lines…licking a trail all the way through his taut abs.

I looked up and he still looked so nervous. He was not fully surrendered.

"Edward, it's okay. Just take this moment in. Allow yourself to enjoy it." I smiled with compassion, remembering the first night he did this for me and how nervous I was.

Old Bella was trying to punch through and tell me I was doing it wrong, telling me to doubt myself and fear that he would regret this, but somehow I knew we could handle this together. I had so much love to give him, and I knew I wanted, needed, to express part of that love this way, if we were ever going to grow past our old roles for each other.

Intuitively I knew somehow that all the foreplay Edward gave me that made me so comfortable would have the opposite effect on his dreading of the actual moment… so I stopped and went for it. Literally. I ghosted down his body even lower.

My first mouth contact with him there came as I glided my mouth down along his length. Edward took a sharp inhale. I flitted my tongue against him, grasping him firmly, and gently, with my hand sliding ever so slightly up and down. A low, easier tone came as he exhaled out.

Then, without hesitation, I put his tip into my mouth.

Edward fell immediately into a fit of ecstasy. My mouth flooded with venom and I sucked him in a slow, patient, deliberate rhythm. He whispered my name, crying out to me softly in the quiet of the night.

Edward's hands, tentative in my hair, were afraid to push or guide me. He called on the last reserves of restraint in his body to keep himself still as my pace quickened. He groaned in the most exquisite tones, louder than before.

I sank down, allowing him in farther, deeper into my mouth. And he roared ecstatically. I moved a little faster. I could handle it now, my mouth learned how to yield to him.

The feeling of Edward in my mouth was not at all as I expected. I think that I thought it would be something close to eating a popsicle. It was not at all like that, except in the most trivial of comparisons. _Definitely not alike in dimensions._

It was also much more sacred than I imagined it would be. I really loved the feeling of trust it required… he was completely vulnerable. And I was absolutely committed to his care and pleasure. And committed to keeping him far away from my new razor sharp teeth.

Under the moonlight and stars, we were fully engaged. And he tasted so delicious. _This moment tasted so delicious._ He was so sweet and so right in my mouth. All of Edward's fears and hang-ups seemed to dissolve and he stopped fighting… and began to allow himself to enjoy it.

He finally opened his eyes to watch so I gave him something to see. Flitting my tongue against the throbbing of his body, grasping the base in a way I hoped mimicked my body's pressure. Humming and growling vibrations onto his body – hoping this was all making him as crazy as I'd become when he'd done it to me.

With my free hand, I softly tickled and traced all the sensitive areas surrounding my focus… again, just as he had done to me. Edward's generosity in loving me had, in a sense, showed me how to love him like this.

He began to shake, his release was at hand.

"Bella… ahhhh… please… move." Without breaking the suction or the eye contact, I gently shook my head in refusal. Then I took him further into the relative softness of my throat, giving him more information about my answer.

"Bella… oh God… I ca… I can't… I won't. Bella, please move."

"Bella. Please." I shook my head again, gripping him just a little tighter. Sucking him just a little harder, calling to his body for release in mouth. I held my suction tightly there as his hips began to pulse ever-so-slightly, despite his best efforts not to do so.

His voice broke free - far beyond what could merely called pleasure. He couldn't fight back the need to let go any longer. And, just like him on me, I didn't stop when he did. I kept going until he lost all sense of composure, exploiting my strength and my will to love him, in order to free his pleasure from every layer of repression.

When he was complete, I laid my head on his stomach, still firmly gripping him with my hand. Edward touched my other hand, asking me to hold his.

I crawled up his body to kiss him… but hesitated, scared of how his open eyes might look upon me now, in light of what he'd said before.

Edward leaned up to me and kissed my mouth with a sweet tongue that was clearly intent on proving to me that my mouth and his affections for it were still as high as ever.

His eyes searched me to find out if I was reassured by that. Then he spoke, "Thank you for loving me more than my courage invited you to."

I smiled, relieved and now also quite self-satisfied. "Careful there, love. To the untrained eye, it might look as if you were a little proud. Not that you shouldn't be." I did a little happy dance inside my mind, but tried to just keep Edward cool with all of this, so I maintained my calm, smiling only lightly.

"I just feel so happy that you let yourself… and that you liked it, after all that."

"Like is really just not the right word. I may have to devise a new word for what I am feeling right now."

"By the way, love, you can have your shoes back. Actually, you can have all of _my_ shoes too if you want them. Frankly, Bella, you can haveany shoes you would like…whatever you see fit, love… whatever you require. Just let me know what I must steal or who I must kill."

"A little melodramatic, but nonetheless very good to know." _Yes, a gloating little happy dance I'd file away for later, next time he gets out of hand._

"I'm understanding your theory on world peace now… and also too what you meant when you said it's not a substitute for being together with you. Nothing compares to being inside your magnificent body… oh, Bella." He rubbed me _there_, so desirously… _oy_. "I also dearly missed your loving soul pressed against me." He clutched me a little tighter.

"You don't have to miss it." I sidled up to him even tighter. "But I would like you to acknowledge that you just spoke about me having a soul, so I want you to believe that you have one too."

"You're just never satisfied, are you?"

"Nope. But I am actually satisfied here. I could lay here forever." I laid my head on my favorite spot on his neck.

"I know, me too, but there's a little problem with that."

"Oh?"

"I'm thinking we might want to go now before we inevitably start up something again. We both have been fairly… um… vocal here tonight. And there are some campers on the other side of that range. I imagine we should not be here if Charlie should come to investigate numerous reports of cries from people being murdered... and love, please resist the temptation to say something clever."

He'd rightly read the dark glee on my face. _Damn it. "Joy kill."_

"I'm thinking only of you. I just wouldn't want you to be shrieking, disoriented, and shoeless again so soon."

"You have _really_ got to work on learning the difference between consequences and incentives."

I dressed quickly, dusting grass, leaves, and petals from the most astonishing places on my body. I felt sad to be leaving, but happy to be going back home with my husband after all that we had just shared.

On the way leaving out, I carved "+ E" into the earth next to the "B" in the heart. "There, now it's perfect." I snapped a picture of it on Edward's phone and grabbed up a pretty bluish pebble and my bouquet as my mementos of the evening.

He smiled and rushed to kiss me, literally spinning me in a circle while he did so. "Bella, I'm **so** in love with you, just absolutely insanely and desperately in love with you."

"And I you. Forever."

The tab in my mind about the wedding dress returned to the fore. _But how to get dressed and surprise him? I'd have to get him out of the house, but how…there's no way he'd leave me again tonight. Hmmmm…_

"Edward, I have a favor to ask."

"Seriously, kill or steal… what do you need?"

"Hmm... let me sit with that and get back to you. I might have a little fratricide project for you in the very near future. But for now, how 'bout for old times if I hitch a ride home around your neck?"

"As if you have to ask." He tossed me up like I was still human Bella.

Literally behind his back, I bulleted the bouquet like a quarterback, wishing for the endzone. I would have to wait. And hope.

The ride home passed so quickly, it was almost a blur even to my superior sight. It occurred to me that even me running at top speeds on the way there was just slowing Edward down. We were easily back home inside of six or seven minutes.

"Edward, I um, left the bouquet you picked for me… would you please, um, go and get it for me?" _And the academy award for lameness goes to…_

"Oh, I would hate to leave you again." He kissed me, still floating a cloud.

"I know, me too, but I just don't want anything to happen to it." I hoped that my ruse was not as transparent as I felt it to be. I hated to use his beautiful gesture of love as a pawn in my scheme.

"That is so odd… I would have sworn that you had it in your hands… my memory is usually infallible, but, oh Mrs. Cullen, how you distract me so. Of course, my darling, I'll go back. I'll return as fast as I can."

_Yeah, that would be the problem._

"Thank you. I'm so sorry."

"No worries. It'll give me a chance to think about tonight… and miss you."

_Because we needed more longing to build up between us. Yeah, we were have a problem generating sexual tension around here._

"I'll miss you too."

"I'll be back very soon, love." _I know you will, sigh._

"I'll think of you every moment until you return." _Now that was completely truthful._

"Will you really, my wife?"

"Every second." _Completely truthful._

"Thank you." He took one last kiss from my lips and left.

The moment the door shut I went into action, frantically scampering to locate my bridal trousseau. Alice had packed my gown away in a beautifully-carved cedar chest, with a quilted panel in the interior for the lingerie and jewelry. She had shown it to me while I was pregnant in the hopes of brightening my spirits when I was at my sickest.

I was now in the catacombs of our closet again – it was seriously bigger than our bedroom and Renessme's put together - trying to find it. How hard could it be to find a large chest, unless of course you were standing in a warehouse.

I figured I had at most ten minutes left to find it, do my makeup, braid my hair and get dressed before The Flash could return. Doable with vampire speed - if I could find the chest soon.

I could hear cartoon chase music in my head as I ran around our closet at comically fast speeds, frustrated and grumbling.

Then I looked up and there sat the chest, majestically perched in its own custom cabinet slot.

A very short while later, Edward opened the door, smiling.

"I thought I smelled vanilla… " He let his eyes follow a path of scented votive candles that led from the front door to our bedroom door.

_Then_ he noticed me, his mouth dropped open, stunned and stupefied. "… and cedar," he said vacantly as a dazed afterthought.

"Thank you." I grinned… beamed, actually, as I walked over and coolly took the flowers from his hands.

"I really needed the bouquet. It completes the look, you see." I talked calmly like I had no real concept of the impact of what I was wearing. I was so relieved that I'd pulled it off. The look on his face was far better than I could have imagined.

Edward slowly walked towards me. "My angel, my light."

"So in your fantasy, who undresses _**you, **_my husband?"


	4. Chapter 4  The Wedding Dress

Hello!

It's another double chapter!

This is also my first attempt at an EPOV. I picked this chapter to do one because I needed to follow Edward's progression and make sure I was sold on how Edward and Bella got where I took them in this chapter.

Well gentle reader, we finally earn our NC-17 in every sense of meaning. This chapter is my first offering of more, shall we say, "graphic" citrus content. The first part is still romantic canon-style, and sets up our transition to the next. The second part is all about exploring vampire sensuality, so the monsters come out to play, thus the graphic content. We've been flirting with it for a little while, as you may remember from chapter 2, but it was still fairly veiled. I'm just giving a heads up since I know that's not everyone's brand of vodka. As you know by now I'm a romantic softy, so how monstrous could my Edward ever really be? I think you'll enjoy yourself, just buckle up! :-)

***Sincere thanks to horizon77, myimm0rtal, and musicluvr for your generous insights, feedback, and supportiveness. I really appreciate you!

Thanks for reading and please review,

yoda5683

**The Cottage 'til Dawn - Chapter 4, The Wedding Dress**

EPOV

Though I would never betray our intimacies, a part of my mind wondered, gloating, if the smirk would come off Emmett's face if he knew that my love was quite a pistol in the making.

The shoes, the angry lovemaking, and just now in the meadow… _oh God, the meadow_.

_I can see I'm going to have to hunt more frequently just to keep up with her_.

I think perhaps that in addition to extraordinary self-discipline, powerful sensuality was somehow a part of what my love brought into this existence - _and by no means am I complaining._

Who knew my blushing bride would make for such a feisty, passionate immortal. Actually, I should have. _My little tiger-kitten_.

Tiger-kitten no more, Bella was all tiger now, a powerful huntress who moved in magnificence.

Kittens wouldn't have had the gumption to take on a mountain lion on their first hunt. Any newborn, seeking human blood or not, would have taken pause at a fight with the giant cat. _Not my mate._

Kittens don't stand over their husbands in high-heeled shoes with no panties. _God._

And kittens certainly don't make love to their husbands so aggressively – and definitely don't with blood-colored irises… and a sneer.

_No… that was not love she made…_

An involuntary hiss rumbled through my teeth in allowing myself to finally accept that that was definitely not love Bella engaged me in earlier. She…_fucked_ me. _Bella _fucked me. _So help me, she will be the end of me yet. _But then, of course, I returned the favor…

Even if I told her, would she understand the rupture she caused in my mind when she violently, and so marvelously, crashed her strong, silky, sexy-as-hell body into mine, compelling me to reciprocate? Liberating a beast she was never meant to meet? And now he paces, hungrily, entitled, confounding me to explain what the point is to keeping them apart if she hungers for him too.

The monster in me bested my self-restraint to reciprocate her hunger in kind, well somewhat at least – I still held him at bay as much as I could. But why bother? Bella loved every moment of it. He, I, gave her what the raw lust in her eyes demanded: I tamed her. Captured her supple, ripe body to my liking. Made her watch.The monster was smiling then as he is now, knowing that we would remember it every time we passed Esme's grandmother's mirror.

Could my love even fathom the stirrings she caused in me? Could she even understand that just now in the meadow, when she brought her mouth down upon my member… so unashamed, so lovingly, so… sumptuously - and had me that way… that she left me completely wide open in love?

But she also placed me in such a state I feared I might never recover from it. And I feared I might claim her like hunted prey. And worse, I feared she would enjoy it. _Oh, Bella._

I've never yearned for anything or anyone more desperately. I love her so very much that it literally wrenches my insides. I feel such conflict; the sacred and the profane boil within me.

The love we had been making was so wonderful; there is nothing more I would ever need than that. When I would kiss her mouth while inside of her, only then did life make any sense. That is truly all the sense it ever need make.

Even if the feelings were not so impossibly immense, it would still be my love. My Bella. It would still be my body joined with hers.

But when I think about her passion, about her boldness… when I stop to remember her fire and her primal sensuality… I cannot see anything but the hunt of her, and her scent. Her glorious, enrapturing, indescribable scent. Mingled with my own. Then my mind turns to darker delights...

The monster smiles, still pacing.

The thought of her body and her taste - remembering the taste of my woman's heat… was absolutely ruinous to me. And possibly to her. I hoped my scent would still be strong on her.

_God, I need my wife._

_Must get home, to where my love waits for me. Also, must not crush her bouquet. __Dammit,_ w_hy am I still being entreated to steward fragile things when I am so stirred!_ Perhaps this was a source of ongoing amusement for some bored deity.

I wondered what she's been up to. Making mischief, of that I was sure. Her flowers were high in a tree on the far side of the meadow. _Lucy has some 'splainin to do._

_Good, rounding to the river now, almost there._

_Mmmm...__What is that delightfully sweet, rich scent coming from our little home?_ Vanilla bean, candle wax, sandalwood, a hint of cedar… _lovely_… _but where is my …. a__hhh…behold…there it is…__the one scent in which all others scents are denied… __I smell my love now. Everything else is incomparable to her. And irrelevant._

_Okay, get it together. Calm down._ _Oh, but her mouth… those lips… and her hips… and my…. _

_God, I need my wife._

I heard Bella shift her weight - an old human habit she would learn to outgrow. It let me know she was waiting for me very near the front door.

As I opened the door, a trail of candles throwing a soft, cozy glow around the room met me. I smiled warmly at her romantic gesture. I didn't need to finish the path to know where those led. _Nice. _I grinned happily at the atmosphere my love had set for me. "I thought I smelled vanilla…"

Bella was behind me, to my left in my peripheral vision, wearing something flowing and white that smelled divine, like her lingerie and probably the storage it was housed in. _I can't wait to see…_

I turned. And _then_ I saw her…

"… and cedar," I said vacantly as an incoherent afterthought.

Bella looked like a radiant dream conjured from the purest happiness of my mind's imaginings.

I'd seen her not fifteen minutes ago. She was heavenly then. She was humbling now.

My love had, from head to toe, transformed herself back into my bride. I felt as though I should wipe my eyes, as if the hallucination should be dispatched in the clarity of better-focused vision. The question became, even if she was a hallucination, why would I want _that_ to go?

So there I stood and stared, transfixed on, and utterly captivated by, my wife's overwhelming, mesmerizing beauty.

I was quite impressed with Bella's ability to style herself. If Alice had seen this - though I prayed my sister's sight was nowhere near this cottage right now - she would be quite pleased with Bella's apprenticeship.

The look of her gorgeous face and hair was near identical to our wedding, except for one unavoidable difference - the eyes. But I certainly didn't feel any disappointment with them. Not for one moment - even though I sorely missed her warm, brown pools and regretted the terribleness that caused the end of them.

No, I was not unhappy with her new eyes. They reminded me that Bella was safe to touch, that she was no longer vulnerable to me or to anyone else. And actually, even though I knew they somewhat scared her and she found them distasteful, I rather enjoyed them, especially while we were behaving … assertively earlier. It reminded me that my love was now a wild creature of great intensity.

I would never be disappointed with her new eyes, for most important of all, if nothing else, they reminded me of just how much she loved me… just how much she was willing to sacrifice for me.

The excruciating pain of her change and the tormented blood addiction she would now endure for me, just so that we could be together. Like the little mermaid walking on painful legs, just so she could walk the earth with me. Forsaking a natural course out of devotion to me. I truly was not worthy of such a gift.

"Thank you." She smiled exultantly while taking the flowers from my distracted hands. She stepped back a little to let me take in a full picture of her.

She talked quite casually, willfully oblivious to my reaction. "I really needed the bouquet. It completes the look, you see." She beamed, full of delight. _Oh, how I love this girl. I literally ache with love for this girl._

Tonight was exactly one month to the night Bella had first worn her lovely gown. Her presence was so enchanting, only she could have diminished the beauty of the garlands that flanked the staircase she descended to marry me. _My Bella, so fair._

My love had just handed me the keys to my most precious of longings, my most treasured of fantasies… undressing her from her wedding gown. I was absolutely floored. I am constantly amazed by her.

She has given me so many, too many, gifts. Herlove was all I ever needed.

I thought my arms too full to hold anything else… until… her body, the raw animal intensity of her new body was visited upon me tonight.

Our intimacy while she was a human, though incredibly beautiful and pleasurable, was but a shadow, a pale echo of the phenomenal truth of her now. Her emotional love for me had always been this powerful. It finally had a body strong enough to properly accommodate it.

_My God, how she loves me. She saves my life._

Every single gesture of love and sacrifice that Bella ever made purchased back long-lost parts of my humanity and purpose. Every day, this angel has insisted to me that I am worthy of her love. Every day, my wife has loved me to a point of redemption and grace. And every day, I will love her all the more.

I walked slowly towards her. "My angel, my light. Sweetheart, I love you beyond all measure and reason."

My radiant wife was glowing with joy, and now, just a hint of scandal in her eyes. Bella smiled like she had a winning hand of cards. I knew that face all too well; she'd thought of something clever to say. This was my little tiger about to come out and play. _Excellent._

"So in your fantasy, who undresses _**you, **_my husband?"_Just look at that impish grin on her pouty little mouth. I will attend to that shortly._

I grinned, and with only my eyes, spoke indecent and adoring things to her. She looked down immediately. I loved that I could still call Bella's bluff, that somewhere inside my new Bella, my blushing human Bella still remained.

_My bride. _She was so beautifully adorned and coiffed that I almost hated to touch her. _Almost_. But she was **my **present, my fantasy… to… undo as I saw fit. And rest assured, that would be my agenda - the total undoing of Mrs. Cullen - _as I saw fit_ – for the remainder of this evening.

Bella moaned very softly, shifting again, and I heard the faintest rustling of her lacy undergarments. _Oh, I am going to enjoy this so very much._ My very own Gibson Girl dressed in the repressed curiosity of my youth. I knew she would look like my stolen adolescent peeks at the pictures in my mother's mail order catalogs.

"You haven't answered my question…" she whispered close into my ear with a low sultry ringing in her voice. Her slender finger slipped into the belt loop on the front my jeans, pulling me closer, threatening to rub against me.

"What you _should_ be worried about is what's going to happen after I undress _you_…" Her eyes rolled back in a satisfying retreat from my response.

I kissed her most intensely, almost lifting her off the ground in my need. She moaned and gripped me tightly, but mindful of her strength.

She ran her terrible, exciting fingers down my back. Then, startling me, she yielded her grasp. I opened my eyes puzzled, then alarmed…wondering if I'd hurt her somehow. Old habits die hard.

But when I saw her face, I understood. Bella didn't want to ruin my fantasy by being provocative. She was going to go slow now, so I could go slow. She really understood me and what I wanted from the chance to undress my bride.

"Thank you, Mrs. Cullen." I sighed, already breathing quite heavily without realizing. I chuckled and shook my head at the power she had over me and the mercy she'd shown in untwining me from her little finger.

"You're _more _than _welcome_." That double meaning was evidence that she was still not fighting as fairly as one might hope, but at least she was not as compelling in this moment as she had been in the last.

Maddeningly and beautifully so, Bella kissed my neck and earlobes most innocently. I closed my eyes and let the warmth of Bella's tenderness wash through me. She treated me to a few more. I felt her now-gentle fingers lightly tread upon my face. I was whole again. _To be loved by such a charming creature_.

"I love you, my husband."

"As I love_ you_, my wife. More than words will ever adequately tell."

I pressed her tightly to me once more, and felt my way carefully to the top of her spine. I slowly unfastened the first four satin-covered buttons on the back of her dress. _I'd been waiting for a conversation with all twenty-five of those buttons since the wedding reception. _Bella shivered at my touch.

I took my time, lingering, and paused to find my wife's stunning gaze under fluttering sable lashes. I stroked her cheek, locked my eyes into hers, and held… prepared to spend the night this way.

Overcome, Bella broke the gaze, and kissed my wedding band, giving me the inspiration for what I said next.

Softly and with a sense of import in my words, I began, "I, Edward Anthony Masen Cullen…"

Bella smiled, bit her lip and looked to be attempting to cry - understanding now I would say my vows again to her tonight. Of course I kissed my bride's non-existent tears away. What else is a husband to do? Her pretty face shined with joy.

Four more buttons softly came undone at my persuasion. I gently nuzzled her ear lobes and kissed her eyelids. She tilted her head ever so gently to give me more access to her. She held me quietly, attempting to remove nothing from me as yet - knowing that I wanted the focus solely on her.

"…take thee, Isabella Mare Swan, as my lawfully wedded wife..." I said faithfully and reverently. Then I kissed herring. Bella made a lovely cooing sound. I slowly undid four more of the tiny buttons.

"…to have and told hold from this day forward…" I touched my hands to her beautiful hair, sliding out one jeweled comb, then the other. Her hair began to fall. I sought the edges of the braids and began to unravel them, drinking in the scent of her as it opened to me. Bella shook it loose the rest of the way. Her dark mahogany waves hung free again, and I was entranced with the magical scent of her. I pressed her even more tightly to me while four more buttons were released from their duties for the evening.

"…for better or for worse..." I could think of nothing worse she could endure on my behalf than what she already had. I knew that for my part, her life would only get much, much better from here. I kissed the locket in thanksgiving for my lamb and lioness. Then I kissed her beautiful lips. Four more buttons.

"…for richer or for poorer…" As Carlisle and I each have more money than Croesus, I doubted we would encounter the latter, but tradition dictates we pledge it nonetheless. I must say that it was always at once frustrating and wonderful that Bella couldn't care less about material things. I could say beyond a shadow of a doubt that my love wouldn't have cared if we lived in a cardboard box, so long as we were together. She loved me for me. And that is what truly made me the richest man of all. Four more buttons.

"….in sickness and in health…." I kissed the first spot of injury that befell her at my cause: the tracker's bite mark, superimposed with my own in repair. His venom should have never been anywhere near her. No part of him should ever have been inside of her. What a blight he and his charming mate had been on our lives these past sixteen months, but I thank the powers that be that they are out of our lives now for good.

I merely touched her sainted leg through the layers of her dress. I would spend more time giving it attention in greater detail later.I moved on now to the injuries caused by her pregnancy and labor. I leaned down to kiss her throat through the high neck of her gown. I wasn't ready to peel the dress back – not just yet. Then I kissed through her clothes at the bend of her elbow, her belly, and lastly over her heart. She clutched me tenderly to her with one hand and tousled my hair with the other. She bowed forward and preciously kissed the top of my head. _Behold, she saves my life, again._

"…to love, honor and cherish…" I pressed my lips against hers in a series of lingering touches I would relish forever. I rubbed my hands over her belly where she'd bravely carried our daughter. I couldn't resist kneeling to place one more kiss onto such a pure and nurturing space. "…always, to cherish thee, my love. Always, evermore…"

I stood back up and looked into her eyes. "…for as long as we both shall live." Bella sighed. I sighed. And the final button surrendered its keep.

"You may now kiss the bride," she sanctioned in sheer happiness. Her smile was so pure, so sweet, with just the faintest whisper of waywardness. _Perfection._

"Why thank you…" I grinned at her adoringly, then I took my Bella into my arms, dipped her back and kissed her most exultantly. My hands were excited to be in contact with the soft, gorgeous skin on her partially disclosed back.

When I righted Bella she looked like my human Bella used to – the thing she called dazzled. I was delighted I was still able to affect her so. Her disorientation quickly gave way to a look of wanting.

She pressed her hands to each side of my face and pulled me closer into her. I leaned in all the more. _Let it never be said that I am uncooperative._

Bella's tongue sought out mine while I slowly peeled her dress forward – slowly, ever so slowly, as not to tear anything. My gorgeous wife sighed my name in a whisper, "Oh, Edward.." I moved her hair to the side and my lips descended to and melted on to her neck's feather-soft skin.

The front of the dress was ready to come down now. I coaxed it lightly and Bella's arms slipped out. She attempted to help me push the skirt down. I caught her hands and playfully admonished, "Ah-ah-ah."

"Oh, right…sorry." She grinned adorably, rolling her eyes a little, and more than happy to play along.

I'd meant to step her out of the dress right then… but the new sights revealed stunned me. _Oh heavens, what a sight_. It wasright out of a 1920s starlet's wardrobe. Structured and the waist cinched, I knew immediately that my fantasy was coming quickly to a very high pinnacle. I spun her into me, anxious to confirm what I already knew… and yes, the back required unlacing. _Save me._ I would get to free my love from the restrictions of a lace-up corset.

So lovely, and so, well… hot.

Not wanting to waste this opportunity with her turned in so close to me, I pressed my lips onto her neck and toured the soft, sinuous line to her shoulder. Bella's breathing tightened. She reached a hand back to touch my hair. Her breathing became more desperate.

"Soon, very soon my wife." We sighed in temptation together. I left her facing away from me, still fixated on the pale, succulent flesh of her delicate neck.

I grasped her waist on either side, straining her to me. She rubbed her body against mine, her hands on mine to invite them lower. "**Very **soon…." I reassured her.

My body was already complicit in her scheme because she'd just rubbed herself so frankly against the front of me. Still grasping her waist, I let one hand gather her skirt and slide in underneath it in order to respond in kind. As I did, I recommitted my mouth to the tender skin on her neck.

In excitement, she rubbed her bottom against me harder. My breath hitched in my throat, because of that and also because my palm was now cupped atop her panties. Bella had almost completely soaked through them. _Oh God._

I met her rubbing with commensurate efforts of my own now. It was only right that she know how much I want her too. How she affected me so.

Her head fell back further, her body a little off balance. "Oh, Edward," she staggered out in a gasp.

I groaned and ran my hands more purposefully across the front of her. Rubbing and fondling her bosom over the corset… and under it.

I pressed my teeth, very gingerly, against where her carotid once vexed and controlled my world. My tongue wrote out a confession to her veins. Bella moaned louder, signaling her patience with my seduction was at an end.

My strength began to overwhelm me. I feared we were becoming reckless. I became nervous for her gown as I felt the passion swimming in both of us, ready to surface any time now. I decided to remove the rest of her gown so it would not be ruined.

I found a moment's composure to get the dress over her head and tossed it safely onto the sofa, away from the candles and from us. Bella whispered a soft 'thank you' to me for the sparing her dress. But I was still concerned for the fate of the rest.

"Love?"

"Yes?"

"Is there anything you're particularly attached to… that we need to make sure survives?"

"No, just the dress…" she said panting, almost dazed. "Oh wait," she said more alert now, "and the… no… just the dress."

Heated, I still found the space to chuckle at her revised priorities and offer assistance. "Bella, are you sure?"

"… I really like the slip as well..."

"You better do it, then, because I really like it too."

In two quick zips, she'd removed the petticoat, and tossed it to the sofa.

"Anything else?" I managed to ask and not sound as totally anxious as I actually was.

"No."

"Good…." I said in breathless desperation.

I took a second, _only_ a second, and took in the new sights. _Oh Good Lord. _The corset was a longform with garter hooks on thigh-high stockings. _Of course it was, because anything less would be endurable._

In but a fraction of the following second, my hands were already renewed in their vigor on my wife's body. They were palming her bottom, and rubbing and caressing her strong, beautiful thighs with urgency. And looking for the exact right way to liberate her from those treacherous panties.

Bella's hand on my clothes distracted me. In literally one and one half seconds, she'd shred everything I had on, shoes and socks included. If I wasn't so aroused, I would have been rolling with laughter. A part of my mind was anyway. I was now more naked than she was. I couldn't help but feel even more turned on by her need for me. And more than ready to respond to her need.

I pulled the large bow at the bottom of the corset and instantly the whole structure loosed itself a little. When I found Bella's eyes, they were wide with appetite. Definitely not embarrassed. Definitely not shy.

The monster knocked. I ignored him.

"Something on your mind, Mrs. Cullen?" I smiled and tensed my body for her while she rubbed my chest.

Stone-faced and intense, not a hint of backing down, she nodded. _Oh mercy._

He knocked again. I ignored him again.

"Well, do I get to hear?" I asked teasingly. She nodded and narrowed the already tiny space between us. There was no banter in her eyes.

Tiny, slender fingers wrapped around me _there_. I shuddered, but stood calm and still. I couldn't fall apart, not in this moment. Because if I did, I already knew how this would play out…she would growl and I would roar and …he… would..._touch_ her, then she would scratch my back… and from there, the universe would implode.

Her other arm hooked over my neck, pulling my face down to hers. Eyes intense, she whispered in my ear, "Edward, you _know…_" Her hunger literally shook her chest in heaves, as she was so overwhelmed with want. I met her mouth, releasing my tongue into it. Tasting her need with witness.

I grabbed my wife up to me and carried her to our bedroom as slowly as I could; the candle light ushered us there.

What a sight the room was. Bella had more candles lit, and the glass doors were swung open. The bedroom smelled like the scents of the garden. They'd swept in so beautifully on the breeze that billowed through the gauzy fabric on our bed. The votives nearest the door flickered, as my wife, almost consumed with passion, clung to me tensely. Restraining herself by forces she was not sure of.

I laid Bella on our bed, and stood over her. Taking in the entirety of her sensual beauty, I realized that not only was Bella shaking, but I was shaking too.

I did the only thing that I could do in the moment…

I parted my wife's creamy thighs and allowed her scent to own me. My thumbs met her at the source of my obsession and I split the drenched panties right in two.

I rubbed against Bella's abundant wetness. _Oh God._ Threatening, but refusing to succumb to the magnetic pull of her body. "Oh… Bella." I resisted entry. She whimpered and bit her lip.

I slipped my tongue into her mouth once again, tracing the inside lines of her lips… the same way she liked me to trace her other lips. My fingertips tickled her in the same oval motion.

Her raw, exposed heat was shimmering with dew, just waiting for me to take her. Her body was moving of its own accord, simulating how she would move with me inside of her, moaning and writhing just a little. _Murder._

The monster concluded that she might like the feeling of a proper possession, a feeling that he promised he could readily afford her in this moment. I ignored him but was trembling at just how good his offer sounded.

I could wait no longer. Her smell lured me homewards. I pulled her knees towards me, beyond ready to have her. I plunged my finger into her to sample her.

_Oh God, my love._

Slowly, cruelly-slowly, I reclaimed my finger, making sure to rub softly and linger on the true seat of her pleasure before withdrawing. She wriggled and twisted in protest of my removal from her, and more of her honey elicited forth at my exit. _God._

Some things are wants and some are needs. By comparison to her, blood would merely be a want. The urgent state of Bella's body was a need - one that impelled me to drink directly from her.

Releasing the hold I had on her knees, I now knelt at the bedside. I seized her waist and lifted the lower half of her body off the bed and pulled her to my mouth.

"You're going to want to grab onto something, my wife." Bella looked undone. And wary. And s_he should be._

I dove tongue-first into the redeeming waters of her. Thrusting my tongue into her in a way my lower body ruefully envied, I lapped at and languished in her. Her luscious little pearl boasted of a prize that she would soon deliver to me. I would insist upon it. It would be so.

I swirled my tongue at such a pace that none of her flesh would have a chance to miss me for very long. Bella knotted her fingers into my hair, feebly trying to grasp some illusion of control over the situation. I increased my tongue's haste. My wife roared out my name, and I roared into my wife.

I injected my tongue into her yet again, inhaling and rubbing my nose against her. This time, it was my fingers that lightly encircled the hooded jewel while I continued to satisfy my craving for her taste.

Bella looked unhinged. She screamed so loud I imagined someone in the other house had to hear her. I would deal with that later. For now, I would concentrate on getting her to make that sound again.

Trading locations with my finger, I brought my tongue to bear directly on her while my index finger tickled inside of her. I chuckled to myself; there was a grand parallel at play. Outside of her, the motion of my finger would be the universally-recognized gesture for "come here". Inside of her, the motion encouraged the very same. _Come_. _Here_.

I threw her knees over my shoulders and pressed myself closer in. _How was I ever going to get enough of her?_ The impossibility of it apprehended me while I brought a second finger ever so slowly into her. I sucked the tiny, exotic jewel in time with the motions of my fingers. Her sweet flesh glistening and quivering. _My treasure opening to me._

Contractions began deep within her. Bella's breathing stilled like the eye of a hurricane. Then, rumbling up to an inevitable outcome, she shrieked and screamed in ecstasy infernal.

My wife roared out my name again now in a guttural tone. And I drank in the sound of my name in her throat and the taste of her on my tongue – not knowing which was more delicious to me.

With her body, still shivering, still pulsing, I continued to supply her with the means and the motive to fill my cup again. My other hand, which was in use to brace her where I wanted her, reminded me that it might be of better service coasting her ripe and swollen contours. I teased her taut, eager flesh. _ Another handful of her, indeed._

_And there it was._

"Oh! God! Edward!"

Bella gushed out to me in a flood, and I drank my fill of her, both of us absolutely lost in the shock of her release. I let her scent, her taste, her abandon drink _me_ in.

Before I realized it, my desire for her had me out from under her porcelain legs and poised over her, at the ready to enter. I tried to stay very still, trying to wait for some sign that my love might want to welcome me into her right now. I was concerned her body might be too sensitive for it.

But then her eyes, her ravenous eyes, in their rush to burn and torture me, told me that she was still hungry. She was not nearly well fed enough, and so I knocked on her door….

She bid me enter.

Gratefully, I pressed into her. _Oh. God. _Bella moaned out a throaty, "Yes!" turning it into an obscenity.

Her walls were still contracting wildly from the magnitude of her last orgasm. I was paralyzed within her. Rendered absolutely motionless by the enormity of her inner pulse.

"Oh Bella.….Ohhhhhhhh…God… Bella!"

I struggled feebly to move in any kind of strength or coordination. I was absolutely stricken, felled by her body. I was about to explode, yet immobilized and powerless.

"Edward, I'm so…oh God…!"

Another wave of rapture took her. Bella wrapped me in her legs and shook her hips in one scandal after another, thrusting into me from underneath.

"Jesus, Bel-…aaahhhhhh…!"

And then the snarling began. The unmistakable call of my vampire wife in heat.

Knowing my resistance waning, driven by the instinct to please me and the compulsion to own me, she began to treat my outburst as a guidance. And proceeded to own me…to…fuck…me. I yelled out unintelligible things, as I couldn't stop myself. I didn't fully know myself right then.

Her state feeding off of mine, she was almost trance-like now. This of course amplified the assault on my faculties. So I stopped fighting it…

My thoughts turned now to collaboration with her appetite.

I quickly rolled us to our sides and found the monster's influence within me more than enough to meet her with force and authority. Bella caved with a loud grunt in her voice.

"Aghhhh…Mmmmmmmmm…God, Edward!"

I threw another thrust into her harder than ever before, but still barring the door to _him_. She smiled perversely, and I nearly lost my mind with the feeling of her soft, juicy flesh swallowing me and her eyes begging for more.

_Oh God, she likes it, why am I resisting this?_

Low and with the full manipulation of the incubus appeal in my voice, I spoke. "Is that what you want? Tell me what you want, Bella." I already knew how she would answer before I asked.

She fully accessed the ringing allure in her own voice. "Don't ask me what you don't want to know…" Bella inhaled roughly, clenching me from the inside, "but if you let yourself, Edward…" Grinning with brazen eyes and hand raking up my sides so aggressively, just shy of cutting my skin "…I PROMISE, you'll want it too."

_Oh Jesus. _I heard myself growl and snarl at her in the filthiest manner.

Again, she smiled impiously, delighted.

It'd never felt like this before. Because it'd never been like this before. My body shivered all over with a feeling like an adrenaline rush. She continued to squeeze and release me inside of her, while throwing her hips harshly into mine.

I walked out further on the cliff's edge to meet her. "Bella… tell me… and I _**will**_ give it to you."

She raised an eyebrow and decided to call _my_ bluff. Her voice low and riotous in its luring, "Don't hold anything back… _anything.._."

I wasn't sure either of us was ready for my dark shadow's full casting. But for my wife - my powerful, sensual mate - I would grant her my willingness to let go. I nodded. Bella's eyes were in disbelief, and thrilled at my consent. _That made two of us._

Shivering and with the adrenaline-like rush overpowering my worries, I spoke, "Please don't forget that I love you."

"Never. Nor I you." I nodded my acknowledgement and kissed her purely for what I feared might be the last time.

Bella looked exhilarated, and…formidable.

_And so it began…_

Unsure of how to harness him, of how to let the hunt filter in, I let the feelings take me over rapidly and wholly. I let my mind careen into the antagonized passion I felt for her. It was chemical. It was pathological. It was the blackest… _pleasure_ – and now it freely swarmed in my system. I let my eyes look upon Bella with the monster's sight. With his nature. Torrid and absolute.

I let his sight show me the things about her I had been missing. That my concept of a delicate, virginal wife was a mythology that only I subscribed to. That my restraint was not only ignoble, but cowardice and rejection of the exciting being she was. That she was not a fragile girl that needed protection from my appetites, but a fearsome, worthy equal with appetites of her own. That she was mine to have, to own, and to take as I liked…

I allowed the snarl bubbling up from my chest to force my lips completely back away my teeth. She grinned at him, and her eyes narrowed. She licked her lips slowly. Vulgarly.

I let the baseness of his appetite have me. I breathed the beast in now, and welcomed his dominion. _He_ grinned back at her and hissed.

And the monster's thoughts became my own.

With full force and unfathomable passion, I stabbed into her. And she screamed…in delight. Her eyes rolled back and she bit her lip.

_Oh ,_ y_ou'll do more than that._

I drove into her with even greater motivation, now at immortal speed, shocking her. She grunted madly with each thrust.

_Fantastic tight, wet cunt. You'll get your fill tonight._

Keeping my promise, she already looked and sounded possessed.

She dug her fingernails into my arms. The pain was nothing, the chafing of her already dripping, sweet, flesh consumed me.

Her head fell back against the pillow, exposing her neck to me. I grazed it looking for where I would sink my teeth into it. The human side urged me not to as the venom would cause her agonizing stinging.

_Fine. But I'm going to fuck her raw._

Her eyes were still rolled back when a sneer began broke across her face. _Excellent; it would have been so unsatisfying to take this magnificent creature without a fight._

Her irises glowed with her old human blood. I was furious, insanely jealous of her body's consumption of my denied pleasure. That was _my_ blood, _my_ prize. I snarled at her and fucked her so hard the bedroom shook. I fucked her so hard, her eyelids twitched and eyes rolled like REM sleep.

When her eyes rolled forward, I saw that her pupils were now constricted and alarmingly focused. _Ah, the Huntress. Welcome._

She shrieked like a demon in a mixture of pleasure and anger, now just waiting for her moment to try to strike at and dominate me. Her senses were keened on my cues, her nostrils flared, her arms tensed trying to assess how to attack me. _So fucking sexy_. But she became too distracted by what I was still relentlessly doing to her, and caved. _That's right, just take it. _I breathed deeply in the victory, the smell of her sex and her broken will.

She was easy now…_too_ easy. I stuck her harder yet. She whined and whimpered for reprieve from the ecstasy, but none was coming.

_Now to finish the first course_…_ against the headboard?… No, that would be far too cliché now…._

Still fucking her mercilessly, I grabbed her ass and clutched her tightly to me. She folded onto me like a rag doll. I snatched her off the bed, almost flying us, and threw us against the nearest wall. _Yes, this will do…_

Pressed onto her so close, eye-to-eye, sex-to-sex, I growled_. She's so fucking gorgeous_. She looked delicious. _Absolutely delicious. _I brought my hands up to brace her on the wall and kissed her mouth roughly, while ripping the corset off, tearing it from the straps.

She grinned.

I licked her lips and pulled her head back by her hair. I hissed in domination as I eyed her.

I rolled my erection around in her, priming her tender g-spot, and raking scratches up her torso. She winced, then writhed in delight. She also laughed a little in delirium as the anger and pleasure burned away quickly in her psyche.

I rammed into her with force enough to lift her off the floor, now rasping her g-spot on each brutal stroke into her. _Look at her face, she loves it._

Her magnificent cunt was absolutely strangling me with deep contractions. _Fuuuuuuccck._ Its grasp upon my cock knocked to my knees. I pulled her along to the floor underneath me, and sought to end her.

She screamed out, "Oh…..God!" She was so full, she came in a burst, rolling out in each new thrust. _Dripping. Brilliant._

"That's it…scream for me." I kept fucking her while she came, and she wailed, but bit her lip, with steely resolve not to yell anymore.

"You first," she said with deadpan delivery. I raised an intrigued eyebrow.

She was still rippling from her release, but she smiled with dark anger now, and I could see that the Huntress was recovered. I smiled.

She wrapped her arms around me and scratched my back hard, damn near peeling my skin up with her fingers. It sounded like screeching metal. And it hurt like hell.

"Sssssssssss…Fuck!" I hissed in a rage.

She smiled slyly, and continued her tight hold on me, while she fucked into me from underneath, until I came. "_Oh fuck!"_ I roared and pulled up chunks of the floorboards with me.

She ran her teeth along my neck, contemplating the same bite I spared her from. She snarled with frustration in denying herself, apparently weakened by her human side's love for me too.

Then she swiftly rolled me on my back, still fucking me like her new religion.

Hissing with her teeth bared, and narrow, calculating eyes, she took great pleasure in pinning my arms back with only light presses from her fingertips. She gouged my wrists with her nails as a little garnish on the dish she was serving. I hissed, bested.

"Keep your hands above your head," she calmly directed, _almost too calm,_ like she was hoping I'd be foolish enough to test her newborn strength. _I'll bide my time._

Then she leaned back on her arms, and spread her legs wide open so I could see halfway up her fantastic little slit. _Yes… yes…._

It was like the sound of flint striking as she rode me _hard_, using her strong thighs to pop back and forth while she let me see her insides, riding me like a pole.

She started milking my cock with her tight grip, getting faster and faster with a devious smile on her vindicated face. _Holy shit._

"God! Damn!"

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" Again, deadpan. She fucked into me so hard, she slid us a distance across the floor, crashing my head into a different wall. Y_ou sexy bitch._

"FUCK!"

"Sorry… didn't catch that either." She crashed me into the wall again.

"I said, I'm going to own you." In an unguarded moment with her eyes closed for just a fraction of a second, I flipped us into the air.

We spun around at rapid speeds, feinting for the power position - looking for advantage over the other while we ghost-danced around the room. We would have been no more than a furious blur swirling across the room to human eyes. I was so turned on by her, I almost wanted to let her win. _Almost._

I found the purchase I was looking for. Stealing behind her, I pulled one of her arms behind her back and with the fingers of my other hand, I slid down between her juicy lips. Before she could do anymore thinking, I sought out her clit and rubbed it brutally. She melted and relented, throwing her head back on my shoulder.

"Now, see…that's better. Nice pussy." I kissed her cheek patronizingly, trying to infuriate her. Then I sucked the flesh on her neck, still fingering her. She hissed, but was otherwise tame again, _m__ore or less. _I returned us to the floor. She wouldn't fight me now. She wanted to lose _this_ fight.

Positioning myself over her, I pressed her flat to the floor and spread her legs apart. I forced her legs to spread wider with my knees. I mounted her from behind, discovering her just as wet as I left her, maybe even wetter. _God._ _Damn._

I began to fuck her hard and slow. She purred as I held her tightly, and slid one hand back around to rub her clit. She moaned, absolutely gagging for it.

"Harder!" I was so shocked that I almost forgot to oblige her. _Almost._ She wanted more, so I gave her more. And more. And more.

"Ohhhhhhh…ohhhhhhh…ffffffuck!" She cried from pleasure somewhere beyond sanity. Pretending that was another request, I gave her even more.

But the Huntress still had fight left in her. She wiggled her tight little ass under me, with no real way to escape me. I'd allowed her no leverage to do so. She tried to close her legs on me, but the angle of my knees held her deliciously wide enough to finish her.

"Is that hard enough, [umph]," I taunted, "or did you [umph] need a little more?"

"Holy. Fuck!" she cried. _Indeed._

I finished her. She was gone with the angle I found her. She took me with her this time, and we poured out our fevers together. I still stroked her, now barely more than an involuntary compulsion to continue this incredible feeling.

We laid panting and gasping together.

Then the unthinkable happened…The scent of deer wafted in through the open glass doors. Bloodlust came upon us both, and we seized, both unprepared to navigate the consequences of it in this context.

Still half beast myself in this moment, fantasies rushed in of hunting with her for sport and fucking her with blood exchanged and dripping from our freshly-fed mouths.

But the human side intervened and I broke off from the thought, unsure of just how much she was ready to know about the true nature of our passions.

Bella hissed and snarled at volumes that made her sound tortured, and then I knew she was exactly where I was. That thought alone could have sent me over. But I quickly found my faculties, withdrew from her, pinned her down in an offensive posture. "Love, Don't. Move."

I held her carefully, until the scent passed, praying the whole time she wouldn't decide to fight against me. _I'm not sure how hard I could be willing to fight against that._ As soon as the scent passed, her body un-tensed, as did mine.

"Edward, is it wrong that I just wanted to…" My Bella was back; I was sure of it. She couldn't even finish the ghastly sentence. Plus, it was the first time in over an hour she'd called me by my name.

I further calmed myself as fast as I could. She had to be scared of what she was feeling and would need me to be… me.

"No. It's just a road you have to make sure you're ready to take." I pressed in close to her ear, turned on again by the thought of it. "And I'm willing to take it with you. You just have to tell me what you want…" I rubbed her body longingly, hoping for one outcome much, much more than another. I pursed my lips in anticipation.

"I… don't think I can…"

I nodded and slumped my head forward, eyes shut tight. The monster was sorely disappointed, but still completely hot for her. I loosed my grip on her, as her discipline was apparently better than mine. She rolled over and sat up, trying to sort this experience out in her mind.

"I mean it's one thing to feed for nourishment; it's another to feed for… other reasons, you know?"

"I totally understand, love." I closed my eyes, mostly relieved and quietly disappointed. Not disappointed with her, but with myself for even entertaining the idea.

"Did _you_...want to?"

"There are many things my mind would indulge if I would let it." She deserved to know just how monstrous I was. She nodded and left the question alone.

"Not indulging doesn't make the…want… go away, does it?"

"No, it doesn't," I said curtly, but too soft for her to be certain of the sharpness. She would have no idea of how profound those words stung me in this moment.

"No." She sat quietly, wistfully, with some understanding that she'd but peeked into Pandora's Box of our world.

"So Edward, every time you had sex with me as a human, you were dealing with this? Craving my blood and having this… um... urge?"

"Yes." I was too deep in my emotions to pivot the question. She shuddered; I wasn't sure if it was because I was a monster, or if it was because I'd changed her into one.

"How in the _hell_ did you..." Turns out it was door number three. _Once again she amazes me. _She shuddered because she was impressed that I'd found the will to not kill her and get off on it.

"Love." I said it quickly. That one was a simple, easy answer for me, and one that I didn't mind sharing. "I'd lived almost two days thinking you were dead. There is no amount of anything worth feeling that again."

"I had no idea. I mean I knew you were tempted, but not like that… wow." We sat in silence. I chuckled with sad irony.

"Do I get to hear the joke?"

"Yeah, I'm just hoping that the 'for better or worse' part of the vow is still working for you."

A fresh breeze wafted, and we both tensed, looking at each other in shock that neither had thought to shut the doors. We held our breaths. I was the first to venture a taste of the air. It was sweet and tasted only like the roses in our garden.

"It's okay." I shut the door that time.

She inhaled, relieved. "So what would have happened if we'd smelled them in the meadow?"

I hadn't even considered that; I shuddered. "I have no idea." How careless of me, yet again.

"Bella, can I ask you something?" I sat down near her but not in eye line.

"Sure."

"Do you hate me?"

"What? No! Why?"

I looked down.

"Edward , come here."

I crawled over to her. She ushered me to lay my head in her lap.

"I went into this life with my eyes wide open. And granted, there are things that I had not… considered… but you couldn't have possibly thought to tell me everything.

"No life comes with an instruction manual, and definitely not this one. The Volturi would never allow it."

I smiled at her attempt at levity and she continued.

"I'm not scared, Edward. I need for you to trust that you and I are up to this and not be scared too.

"Edward, I love you and will always love you, ALL the parts of you- well us- forever.

"What we shared tonight was… amazing. You let go. You actually let go for me. And it was OH MY GOD, I can't even…"

If I could blush, I would have, and never stopped.

"And before you start the whole self loathing and regret about anything, please, please don't. I loved it. Every minute of this night. I love it when you're sweet, too. Tonight doesn't take anything away from you being my gentleman. Only I know what a wicked man you are." Now I really cracked a grin.

I grabbed her and pulled her face more down to me. "And I know something now, too."

"Oh yeah, and what is that?"

"Come closer." She leaned in.

"Closer." She put her ear to my mouth.

"You like it rough," I whispered, delighted and aroused again. She grinned widely, and held out her hand to present the room as evidence.

We looked around the room. Floorboards pulled up in some places, buckled in others. Bed in shambles. Cracks in the walls. Curtains rods pulled off the window. _I'm not even sure when that one happened._

"_Sooo_ much." She bit her lip, and looked down, and shook her head in reflection. _God, my wife is so hot._

"We still have plenty of house left to christen. Care to determine precisely _how_ much?"

Her head popped up. She smiled like she had a winning hand of cards.


	5. Chapter 5 Tick Tock

I'm not sure if I will ever have words to explain what I just experienced. But what I will say is that I now have a context for what people mean by swinging from the chandeliers.

All I know is that at the moment I am a pile of goo. A quivering, pulsating, bundle of electrified nerves. I feel like one big cascade of tripped circuits.

Meanwhile, my gorgeous husband - whose angelic beauty stands in stark contrast to the devastation in the room around him – me included – still looks inexplicably perfect, without one perfectly-disheveled hair out of place.

Edward smiled softly, trying very hard to suppress his pride. Now that he'd embraced his feral nature, now that he'd trusted himself and me enough to handle it, he was free and it showed. It wasn't quite gloating, more relief that he could risk what he feared, so his par-smugness was forgivable. The very incarnation of restraint and self-denial had all of this raw energy just broiling within him the whole time.

"My God! I feel like I should smoke a cigarette or something!" At that moment, I lacked all self-censoring capabilities.

Edward could no longer contain his pride and laughed heartily now.

"Well, you should have thought about that before we put out that unfortunate votive fire. Besides, smoking kills, you know. And as for calling on God… clearly, if God did not feel the need to intervene in our last … encounter… I fear we are on our own." His smirk was reaching dangerous levels now.

He kissed my jaw as a way to conceal the glee in his eyes. But I'd seen it already. _Rapscallion._ His mouth was now completely covering mine with another amazingly passionate kiss. His tongue probing and tantalizing expertly. _Evil._

"Clearly." My mind was spinning, literally reeling, from the inconceivably more intense sequel to our newfound wildness.

His eyes twinkled as he smiled adoringly while I rubbed his strong, heavenly torso. I snuggled in closer as he kissed the top of my head.

"And it will be the type of things you did to me on the ceiling … and not cigarettes, that will kill me." _No, you did not imagine that, Bella. We were really on the ceiling. The ceiling. The place opposite the floor. The. Ceiling. The fucking ceiling. Literally. _

Suffice it to say, Edward has obviously spent some time in a parallel universe as an aerial artist with Cirque du Soleil. And I absolutely refuse to process something as ludicrous, as deliciously obscence, as what our monsters got into up there. So I will just file that right away to a tab in back along with most of this night, so that I can function. One day, that file will explode, I'm sure. But for now, I gotta do what I gotta do.

_So much for my stealth new vampire body._ Now punch-drunk, with spaghetti legs, I can't even imagine how my human body and mind would have handled all this. _Oh, right, I'd just be dead. _

Just as I was having my sexistential meltdown, the very last surviving glass pane broke away from its place in one of the French doors, exhausted. It was quitting, registering a self-sacrificing complaint about our behavior. We both laughed at its ritual suicide form of protest.

We hadn't had the discipline to stop long enough to move to and "christen" any other rooms in our lovely cottage. I'm glad of that now. The disaster zone was confined to this room.

Now that the French doors were ruined and the breeze blew in unrestricted once more, we got up and headed for the living room.

Before we shut the bedroom door, we took one last look around, then at each other. Edward winked at me, as proud as I've ever seen him. I buried my face in his shoulder. "Oh this poor room! Esme put…ALL of you put so much love into this house and now this room looks like it's been through the Apocalypse!"

He put his arms around me and pulled me closer. He chuckled again softly, with compassion. "I'll take care of it, love. No one else will see it like it this. I promise." He kissed me reassuringly, then popped quickly back into the bedroom. Just as suddenly, he emerged wearing the boxers I'd borrowed earlier, astonishingly unharmed in the fray. And had new victims, er, I mean new jeans and a tee, thrown over the bend of his arm.

I was a little delayed in responding, confused and horrified as to why he'd taken his arms away from me. "Sorry, did you say you'll 'take care of it'? Um, not to doubt you, but Edward, the room ….well, it looks beyond repair."

"Your faith in me is moving, by the way. And yes, I _can _do most of the repairs myself. Disturbingly enough, I have lots of practice with these kinds of damages from the newlywed McCartys," he reminisced looking haunted.

"Can't we just wait until morning?"

"It really won't take me any time to fix this room up."

"But what if we want to cause a little more damage before the sun comes up? Maybe we should just finish wrecking it and then fix it…or blame it on a tornado …ooh, or a brush fire…that missed your family's home, and you know, anything else out here." I did the little flirt face I'd awkwardly practiced on Jacob at LaPush, the one that Edward lied and claimed was so effective. Edward smiled a little but otherwise totally ignored my persuasion efforts.

"The only thing I'm actually going to need assistance with is your bit of handiwork here with the living room floor, Mrs Cullen. Didn't you hear the foundation crack?"

_How does one answer that? Um yes, I heard what sounded like a tectonic plate shift, but I ignored it because I was otherwise absorbed?_

_But the foundation? I split the foundation? Oh, come on!_ I was a new depth of mortified. And secretly, just a little proud, I gotta say.

He continued, "I'll definitely need help shoring that up. Four of us will have to take a side of the house and brace it for at least the first half day while the concrete cures. And please, don't ask me how I know this." He looked scarred.

"All this over that that teensy little baby split in the floor? Oh that's nothing. We can just spackle that. Besides I think the rug looks better there anyway." The stress of having the family help with the repairs was catching up with me, and compounded with the guilt of what it would take for them to repair it.

He rushed back to me and crowded in close on my neck. In his sexy, breathy voice, tickling my neck just under my ears and just barely above a whisper, "No, I mean that large chasm in the floor made while my wife was_ insatiably_ fucking me into it." He released the most delicious low moan into my ear, while he rubbed his favorite place on earth.

My eyes rolled back and stayed there. _Cowards._

His polite-company voice returned and called me back to normal. "Love, please try not to be embarrassed about the floor. I'm not. And if it makes you feel better, our family is very familiar with these kinds of… repairs. Besides, I could have said something, but I didn't want you to stop either. Does that help you - knowing any of that?"

"Um, not so much, no. And I'll tell you why not, two syllables: Em-met."

"I'll admit, I'm not much looking forward to accidentally hearing my family's thoughts on this topic. Particularly Emmett's. I'm also not especially looking forward getting assistance with the floor from Carlisle.

He caressed my face, sensitive to my humiliation and chagrin.

"But it will be fine, Bella. You'll see. It will be handled very tactfully. Probably while all of the better halves are out, we'll just come in and take care of it, and that will be that. Everyone one except for Emmett will probably have the grace to never bring it up."

"Thanks Edward, I do actually feel a little better now. "

"Oh yeah, that's excellent. What helped?"

"Edward Cullen just said fuck. And in his filthy, Velveteen Edward voice, no less."

Even though I'd heard his monster use it liberally tonight, this was the first time I'd heard _my_ Edward say it - the softspoken, the chivalrous father of my child, Edward…the man who wouldn't even let our kissing get to be too much only two months ago - just said fuck in a satiny whisper. My brain and body re-goo'd.

I was so in my reverie that I hadn't noticed his face had fallen. "Sorry, Bella, I just got carried away. I didn't mean to be disrespectful, I'm still adjusting to our new -"

"Oh my God! Would you stop! I was saying that I liked it."

"Oh. Ohhh." He smiled, catching on, finally. "You still surprise me. Although I think after what we've been through tonight, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that, should I?" He leaned in to kiss me, and then abruptly pulled back. "Wait…Velveteen Edward?"

"So, there's something I want to ask you, but I don't know how." Fingers intertwined, me laying on his bare chest as I looked down at our jumble of fingers. It was like old times in my room – well except that more than just _his _chest was bare now.

"Bella, you can ask me anything. You know that."

"I know...I just …I don't know how."

He touched my chin to tilt it up. "Bella, what is it?" brows frowning slightly with concern.

"No, nothing bad... It's about…sex…something good, _very good_, about it." I dropped my face against his chest, equal parts embarrassed and frustrated by my uncontrollable bouts of shyness.

"Oh, I see." He tilted my head back up, "Bella, you really can ask me anything you like." A kind grin warmed his face.

"Okay …..I was curious about something that you do when we're…well, okay….there's this way that you…um…touch me…..and my whole body shakes."

"Ahhh…" he nodded and leaned into me smiling proudly, knowingly, and whispered in my ear "Bella, that's your pleasure spot. I rub it for you." He was kissing me now with a naughty little edge of tongue to it.

"Oh wait, no… that's not it. _That_ feels REALLY good too, REALLY good….but there's something else you do… on the inside of me. "

"I _was _talking about the one on the inside of you. You have two. Well actually, you several," my head jerked away from him like he'd said I had twelve noses. He just smiled and kept going, "Every woman does. What you're talking about, to borrow from the popular abbreviation, is your G-spot."

"I've heard of that. I just never understood exactly what it did."

"It's very sensitive, and when you get….aroused…it fills with your-" he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He shook his head to clear it, exhaled in a gust and returned to explaining. "And when I touch it," he paused and switched to a breathier voice, "you make my _favorite_ faces… Shall I demonstrate?"

I _so_ wanted to say yes, but I caught his rapidly-descending hand while doing a little head clearing of my own. "Wait, I have more questions."

"Oh, you do, do you?" His matchless golden eyes were dreamy and heavy-lidded. "Well, let's hear them."

"I was wondering, about what you …. like?"

His soft, full lips pursed together, savoring his thoughts, whatever they were.

"Thank you for asking me. But Bella, would you believe me if I told you that you already knew everything? That you already were giving me everything that I 'like'? "

"You're just saying that."

"No, love, I'm really not. You _cannot_ _imagine_ what you feel like to me… what you do to me."

A wicked, wicked finger slowly traced the contours of my chest, teasing me, and headed for destinations south. I caught his wrist again, but barely this time.

"Well, can you tell me what I'm already doing that you …like? I mean besides the fantasies I already know about."

"I don't know that I can pick one thing out. It's everything about yo- Oh, for the love of… Bella, please don't pout! Alright, what I like…

"First, what you have to understand that when you came along, I was shut down. I was barely alive by any standard of existence. Then the intense craving I had for your blood jolted me back to life…

"It was just everything about you, really. Your character, your good heart…

"And then there's your bright, curious…mischievous mind. Always pushing the envelope.

"When you focus that dangerous mind, and when you allow yourself to own your powerful, alluring beauty, _oh_ _good heavens_. I can't imagine any man not feeling a helpless, gravitational pull towards you.

"As for the physical elements, it isn't just one thing. It's layers of experience that I get to share with my best friend.

"All the nights you called my name in your sleep, while I held you… I was terrified to let myself acknowledge all the stirrings you caused in me….Hearing the sensual timbre of your voice, the first time I caught the scent of your sweet arousal …. and then the fulfillment of hearing you speak my name the same way once I was _finally _inside of you….

"Ever since the moment I first entered your body, I've been addicted to you in a way that no mere blood craving could ever stand against.

"Now put that into context with the way you naturally move without even trying, the way your body fits to mine, the way you kiss me…the way you touch me, the exquisite sounds you make…the bold look you get in your eyes when you're excited…and my God Bella, I never stood a chance.

"And on top of _all_of this, I love you, so desperately. Every second of every minute.

"Now does that answer your question of what I merely like about you, Mrs. Cullen?"

"Oh, my God. You're so wonderful." _Okay, I got nothing._ _Not nothing. Speechless and useless. I got nothing but imaginary tears and a desire to rip clothes off of him. _His boxers pleaded with me for a stay-of-execution.

"I love you so much, Edward."

"As I love you."

While I considered the merits of the boxers' final appeal, Edward resumed,"But now that I think of it, there is actually one intimate thing I would like to experience that you don't yet know about. You actually brought it up yourself tonight." _Poor boxers, this is not looking good for you._

"Well tell me. Please. Anything you want."

"It was when we were on the phone earlier and you said I should hurry home or you would be forced to… 'do something' without me."

"Yeah…I might remember saying something like that." _Oy,_ _I know where this is headed. _ I swear my cheeks were red and burning.

"Bella, have you ever…I mean… about me?" Apparently my shyness was contagious. Edward looked down, unable to make eye contact.

Not to be outdone in awkwardness, I countered with shy-person's jujitsu, "have _you_?"

"Well… many times while I watched you sleep, and you called out my name - despite my sincerest efforts not to - I often, very often, wondered if you permitted yourself the same kind of… release …that hearing you call my name like that … required… of me. "

The brain goo accelerated as I mentally pictured Edward doing what he'd just admitted to me. What an erotic, sensual vision my mind's eye afforded. Five whole seconds passed and I was still in my daydream.

"Bella, please say something."

"Huh? Oh sorry. So you….."

"Yes. I did. Is it alright that I'm telling you this? And asking you this?"

"Absolutely. Talking about this is fine. Very fine. You just have to give me a second. I'm just processing this. So all this time, you're pushing away from me, you're at home…you were are home, right?"

Edward howled with laughter. "Yes Bella, I was at home. Not in your room." He couldn't resist stealing a kiss from me.

"So all of this time, you're treating me to the whole virtue thief routine, and you're just one big ball of hormones too."

"I never that said I wasn't. But would it have made anything better if you'd known how threadbare my resolve really was? How badly I struggled with needing you and loving you."

"It would have at least let me know how much you wanted me."

"Silly girl, I've told a million times you how desirable you are. Would knowing that I couldn't resist fantasizing about making love to you make you any less doubtful? Or make the reality of our challenges at the time any less real? I imagine it would have only undermined my efforts to keep you alive."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

"Okay, love, we'll agree to disagree there." he chuckled. "So, I've answered your questions, Mrs. Cullen. Are you ever going to answer mine?"

"Yes. And … yes."

"So you did? Bella, that's so…hot. And flattering. I mean it's perfectly natural, but just somehow overwhelming too."

"Yeah, I know the feeling. And you should know, I never felt…worked up enough…to need to do that, until I met you."

"You see this is what I'm talking about when I say that you being you is torment enough. When you say things like that…God, I'm absolutely done for."

"Is that right? Done for, eh?" I was in a dreamy haze of pride and still with the daydream of Edward touching himself and thinking of me."

"And by the way, love, the same is true for me; I never wanted to, never needed to, before you." _Damn him. _

"Bella, if your offer still stands, another 'like' of mine would be to watch you…. or maybe even assist you, the next time you feel like _doing_ _something_."

"Okay." I said it so shaky, it sounded a little creepy instead of willing.

"I've embarrassed you. I'm sorry, darling. I just thought …."

"No, no. Yeah, I will…I mean, I do…want to…with you…. I'm having a little trouble with the idea of all of the, um, attention on me….performing."

"Ah, I should have thought of that. Well, another time, when you feel ready."

"No, I want to get past this with you. You've surrendered things that were very difficult for you tonight. I want to reciprocate."

"There's no rush. We have all of eternity."

"Oh no, there's a rush Edward. If you could see inside of my mind, you would understand the rush."

"Your lips to God's ears. I'd love to see inside that mind of yours, Mrs. Cullen. You have no idea how much." Rich, delicious, honeyed kisses were poured all over my lips and my face.

"So…okay, tell me more about how your fantasy works with this…how you want to… see…me…doing it."

"It's not something to be staged, love. This is more about allowing me having the privilege of seeing you being totally with your passions. A voyeur to your pleasure."

"What about when you touch me and kiss me…_there_?"

"Mmmmm, _that_ is SO good too, my love. But it's not quite the same. I'm still orchestrating that. This is about you completely taking charge of your own body's satisfaction. There was a moment earlier tonight when you first sat up on me, when you rubbed your own body, lingering on the swell of your gorgeous breasts. Your head fell back, you cooed and you unknowingly spread your legs even wider. Had I not already been so crazed by everything else going on in that moment, that alone would have caused me to snap."

"Edward, I'm willing. I just need to wait until I feel a little more confident. Like I've felt at other moments tonight. Know what I mean?"

"Oh, I do indeed. Your confidence is something that has to be seen to be believed. But fear not, I also find my little visits with my formerly blushing bride wonderful as well. Take your time. Whatever you need. We have all the time in the world…now."

"Edward, it's almost 3 am. Time is slipping away from us. Please don't leave again. Not tonight."

"You'll never know how much I don't want to. But I'll only be gone a minute. I'm just going to the main house. Let me be a good husband and just get this taken care of."

"Yeah right, one minute. That's impossible unless McLanahan Lumber has a twenty-four hour substation in the main house that I don't know about. I'm telling Charlie you left me three times in one night after only a month of marriage."

"Hey! Even though I have gratefully reaped many benefits, the first two times I left tonight were not my idea, as you may recall. And this is not really leaving. I won't even be gone long enough for you to miss me. I just don't want you living like this. I promised to take care of you. Having you in a home with a post-apocalyptic bedroom is not taking care of you. Anyway, since you brought up Charlie, do you think that he would want you in conditions like this?"

"Edward, I think you and I both know Charlie would never get past trying to figure out what c_aused _the conditions. Ah, now _there's_ a gruesome treat…visualizing Charlie's face taking in the Bella-shaped crater in the ceiling. A fine moment for father and daughter. You could look a little less proud over there, you know."

"I know. I'm so sorry, Love. I can't help myself." Losing a battle with his cheeks, he was still desperately trying to suppress his brimming joy, "You're not the only person out here navigating new waters tonight, you know."

I ignored him and went back to my self-righteous diatribe, "I mean, what if he just stopped by to say hello and found the house literally rocking because you doing God-knows-what to me…oh right, there's no just stopping by becau-….".

I was at once crestfallen that reality seeped into my bubble and heartbroken for Edward that I was dumb enough to say something like that in front of him.

Before I could fix it, Edward was at my side. "I'm so sorry, but this is just the way it has to be now. Bella, please tell me, are you having… regrets?" He grimaced, just bracing for the worst kind of response. Each word in his question sounded like it shredded his tender heart with glass just to ask it.

All I could think to do was kiss him and hold him, but I could still feel him waiting, bated. All the joy had left the room.

"Now who's being absurd. Edward, look at me. I'm all in. I'm yours … forever. And look at me Edward, I'm happy to be here. To be with you. To be one of you. No regrets. Okay?"

Metaphoric color returned to his beautiful ice-colored face. "Okay." He whispered it silently and buried his face against my silent heart, while the rest of the feelings we could not speak about the situation passed us.

I held him close to me, rocking him gently, alternately tousling and smoothing his hair, trying to console us both about the imminent absence of most our family and friends from our life.

Nightbirds outside sang defiantly cheerful songs about hope for the future.

"Look, just don't go okay?"

"Bella, I promise it will only be one minute."

Edward darted off to the bedroom and returned with a watch that looked like it cost more than Charlie's house. "Here, you can time me, love. One minute." It had simple, understated, modern, yet classic lines. Meanwhile, I was scared to touch it, much less activate the stop watch.

I promise I'll be back to you before the minute has passed. And I'll have the room patched within another five minutes after that. And then," he kissed me softly on the lips, "we can get back to enjoying the rest of our evening."

Edward was being so sweet, but all I could manage was Eau de Petulant Brat, "Fine, I'll time you, but there's no way you could be back in a minute with everything you'd need to fix this room. Just admit you want a little break time from me."

Edward's face jolted up, and the expression on it was not good. _Oh, crap, Not that face. I'd poked the bear one too many times. _

Edward leaned in and spoke in the most seductive and contempt-laced tone, "Well how about this, we'll make it interesting. If I win…sweetheart…and _I will_…I'm going to fix that room up for you and then you're going spread your legs for me. And you're going pleasure yourself while I watch. And there will be no more breaks. And no more talking tonight. At all."

The gear shift to New Bella came without a moment to spare.

"Accepted. And if_ I_ win, _I will_ spread my legs for you and I'll touch myself for you too. But there will be no talking because you're going to take me back outside... and I will be getting fed from either your body… or from a deer's….it's your call."

"Bella, what the fu- Shit!" He paced, crazy-eyed, raking his fingers through his hair, "...absolute fucking death of me… ." Then he stopped abruptly and returned to me, face steely and humorless, "Accepted."

"Aright, threshold to threshold in sixty seconds with everything on your list," I reviewed, "Agreed?"

"Just call it," he said dryly. His tone was as condescending, and as uninterested as he could muster. My superior hearing caught the trembling in his vocal cords. There was panic just below the façade. But I didn't call him on it, since he didn't call me on mine.

"Fine. On your mark. Get set. Go."

He took off in a blazing speed that made me wonder if he'd actually be back in thirty seconds instead of sixty.

But just then, he curiously doubled back. The look on his face was sincere and worried.

"Bella, are you sure? About your wager, I mean? I want you to be sure…"

"This is all very sweet, and I appreciate it, but time's a-wasting, Mr. Fixit…. Tick tock…. 48, 47, 46, 45…." It was the most cloyingly, patronizingly sweet voice ever. I got on my own nerves.

He glared at me icily and took off running - seething and muttering something about fucking me senseless and then fucking me some more. _Oh Pooh. Oh bother._

Edward was going faster now than I'd ever seen him go. There was even a whistling pop in the air like the Edward version of an aftershock from a jet cutting through the sky.

_Perhaps the next time he says he'll be back in a minute, I'll just say okay..._

I stayed in the doorsill. My mind was racing with all of the implications filling in, flooding in really. My primal mind was delirious and thirsty in every sense of meaning. My human mind was worried and peppered me with questions about all thoughts that freaked me out when it first came up.

All while the time tab in my mind alerted me to the fact that there were only twenty seconds left now.

And so, we would wait for an answer. One way or another, 3:24 was coming.

I began to count down in a soft voice that I knew would still be loud enough that he would hear it.. "18, 17, 16, …"

He did. I heard him returning. Rather I heard his version of a sonic boom announce him before I could even hear his lightning-fast footsteps. I hopped up from my place in the doorway so I would not impede him and stepped back.

"13, 12, 11…"

He was here now, but instead of entering, he bizarrely stopped dead in his tracks at the walk way. I was eying the sack and pallet filled to brim that laid beside him the grass. It was remarkable. It looked like everything was there.

It was. "So Bella, I have everything. Should I enter and win? Or should I stay out here and, um…. lose?"

_Oh my God, he isn't doing what I think he's doing. No, of course, that's exactly what he's doing._

"What?" _Smooth stalling, Bella. Because as Edward knows, your hearing diminishes after you become a vampire._

"In... or out?"

"What?" _Am I sweating? I feel like I'm sweating._

"You're going to decide who wins this bet. And by my estimates, you have about eight seconds left to choose.

"So Bella… are you in?" Or are you out? Five seconds. Tick tock."

_Smoke 'em if you've got 'em._


	6. Chapter 6 The Hunt

**The Cottage 'til Dawn****-****Chapter 6, The Hunt**

Moment of honesty / Someone's got to take the lead tonight/ Who's it gonna be?/ I'm gonna sit right here and tell you all that comes to me /And if you have something to say, you should say it right now. Are you ready?

You give me a feeling that I never felt before / And I deserve it, I think I deserve it / It's becoming something that's impossible to ignore / And I can't take it / I was wondering maybe, could I make you my baby / If we do the unthinkable, would it make us look crazy / **If you ask me, I'm ready **

-Unthinkable, Alicia Keys

"Bella?"

It wasn't supposed to be like this. The fates were supposed to decide. Or Edward was supposed to decide.

I wanted to answer him, but all I really felt like I _could_ do in the 4350 milliseconds that remained was put all of my enormous mental capacity into remembering what it was like when Edward had me pressed to the floor - still inside of me - after giving me what felt like twenty orgasms all at once.

When I encountered a very different kind of Edward for the very first time…

When I encountered a very different kind of _appetite_ for the very first time…

"Bella…"

The scent of the deer was so strong in my memory that it was in my taste. And it burned my throat, exquisitely. The pain was almost ambrosial, a most appealing of aches. The ragged thirst suggested that warm, wet blood may be able to quench more than one my whetted urges.

"I'll just… come in." Edward's defeated tone shocked me back to present. He'd tried very hard to make his expression even, but his disappointment was not at all concealed.

"No… no, wait! Stay outside! I'm asking you to. I'm asking you to!"

"I didn't mean…. I just wanted _you_ to choose, either way… Are you su- "

"I'm sure… I'm sure!" I nodded eagerly, a little flustered by the gravity of the moment.

Just then, the stopwatch went off.

"Time's up," we said softly in unison, allowing the remaining beeps to punctuate the statement.

"I win," I followed softly, still marveling at the implications of the concept.

A nervous, aroused smile wavered in the corner of Edward's mouth, afraid to stick. I bit my lip and smiled back, just as hesitantly, and just as excited.

"Bella, it's not too late to change your m- "

I raced to him. He was still standing at the start of our walkway. I jumped up and wrapped my legs around him like a pretzel, silencing his tongue with my own.

This was no time for thinking. This was the time for instinct. This was the time for feeling. If I was going to do this, I would have to do what I'd asked Edward to do only a couple of hours earlier: let go, embrace my desires and trust that we were both up to this.

Our kisses were maddening and wet. Our sighs were a dancing, organic resonance, echoing off the cottage and the adjoining fence. It was such an incredible moment, heightened by the aliveness of the vibrant sounds in my new ears.

I felt so sexy and so decadent. I was outside, completely naked, and draped exotically around my fully-dressed, patrician husband. I had no sense of modesty or decorum. I was like some nude bather in a libertine, impressionist painting. It was completely improper… and fantastic. Totally absent of boundaries.

He reluctantly broke away from my mouth. "Should I just …take you back into the house? God, I don't think I can wait, can you?" His voice was breaking, barely more than a hoarse shell at this point.

"No, I don't…." my voice was trembling, "…but let's try to wait …somehow. I really want to… hunt… with you, _**badly**_….. Please…."

"Anything… it's yours…." His breathing was erratic. His voice little more than a whisper. His mouth found mine, agreeing to the impossible.

Frustrated at that moment with the concept of words, I led his mouth down to my chest. He understood my wants and took my nipple gratefully into his mouth. He was trying to take in almost the whole of my breast with it, sucking wildly, while sensually caressing the other. It was unbelievable to witness the ways his mouth and hands naturally travelled and owned my curves. And even more unbelievable to feel the sensations caused by them.

Unable to watch anymore, I hooked one arm behind his neck, arching my back into him. I turned my face to the night sky while he continued to worship my body. I shrieked and held him tighter with my thighs, grinding onto him through his clothes. Edward growled softly, sending subtle vibrations through me, and pulled me in closer.

The beginnings of a sneer contoured my lips as he continued darting back and forth eagerly from breast to breast. His tongue flitting in tiny, chaotic swirls across me, while my breath caught in my throat.

I strained him to me, uttering one moaning cry after another. My head was spinning already. My legs were weak and threatening collapse from their hold. I clung even tighter with my arms, scared to cede my grasp, and hooked my feet together behind him tighter yet for added measure. Edward sacrificed one hand away from his pursuits to help support me since I was rapidly crumbling.

_Oh, this is all toooooo good, too incredible_. I was so scared that this all somehow wouldn't be allowed to happen. Scared that things had gone too far just for even considering it, and the iron fetters of old would somehow reemerge in this reality and intervene.

But neither I nor Edward had any interest in denying what we both wanted…not anymore. We were past the point of denial. Past the point of worry. We were here, we were sure, and we were both desperate for this ultimate abandon to our total selves.

Slowly, and without interrupting his conversation with my body, Edward walked us into the forest, while I clung to him in agonized longing.

In the deep of the forest, dark and lush, I attacked Edward's neck, with a loud, alarming snarl. If the skin on his neck had been any softer, I would have torn it. I realized then that I was subconsciously trying to feed on him. Edward realized it too, because he growled defensively, aroused _and_ provoked.

He caught me by the nape of my neck and glared at me with threatening eyes. Then he redirected my dangerous mouth back to his. I would love to say I didn't enjoy how roughly he'd done that,_ but I sooooo did. _

He growled again and so did I, but it wasn't motivated by my behavior this time.

"You smell them, Bella?" he inquired in a whisper dripping with heat. His finger traced the valley between my breasts.

"Yessss," I hissed, in an almost intoxicated state, "wh…where are they?"

"Not very far. Are you ready? Or do you want to…._play_ a little, first? I thought this would be a good distance for you to get…."

"Yeah. Give me a little time to…"

"Of course…whatever you need…just let me know when you're ready…_If_ you still want t-…."

I put a finger over his lips and nodded with enough intensity in my eyes that he flinched a little. He'd had enough reassurance that this was really going to happen and returned to my mouth urgently.

I was amazed at this hybrid that Edward had become over the course of this night. Of course the feral part of him was all ready for hunt. But somehow my gentle husband was there in that passion for the hunt too, but still waiting so patiently for me to be at 100%... probably still in some part hoping I'd change my mind. _The most desirable, satisfying mix of angel and animal._

I can't describe what realizing my gentleman Edward was fiery in his own right did to my emotions, but suffice it to say, I found myself that much closer to 100%.

I slid my hand down inside of Edward's jeans and underwear and began to stoke his fire with my own.

"Mine," I hissed through gritted teeth.

"All yours, my wife, forever."

"Forever."

With each stroke of my hand, Edward groaned into my mouth in the most sensuous and savage grunts.  
_I_ was the one on fire, taking in his sounds with deep, deep satisfaction.

"Off. Now." I directed in a calm, calculating voice that I'd recently learned made him crazy.

I stroked him even more forcefully. He was already so ready that the tension on the front of his jeans was unbelievable. "**Now**."

"Bella…_Oh, Jesus_….are you ….sure ….you …._ Ohhhhhh, Jesus_….want …I can't be in control of myself out here with you like _this _for much longer..."

"Am I _sure_?" I asked, with one eyebrow raised to the hilt. I answered his question by returning to my preoccupation with his neck.

"Bella…..sssssssssssssss…God Dammit!" he shouted angrily, "would you stop trying to bite me!…ssssssssssssssssss..._ oh shit…that feels SO good_….._"_

Aroused to a point of anarchy, I still pulled up, distracted by the hilarity and absurdity of him having to ask me twice in as many minutes not to bite him. _The blasphemy!_ I was also quite moved with how aggravated and yet helpless he was that he couldn't make me stop. I felt corrupt - _it was fabulous_.

"I'll stop, if it's too much for you…." Liquid silver bells chiming in my throat.

"_Pleeeease_ don't do that." His voice was heavenly and laced with delectable notes of real desperation and menace.

"Do what?" I asked in a dusky voice.

Rubbing has hands less-than-gently on my waist, still nuzzling my chest, "You _know_ what you're doing….talking to me in _that_ voice, challenging me….and you KNOW what will happen if that continues…."

He switched to tonguing my ear in a way that is or should be banned in the lower forty-eight.

I pretended he hadn't just ransacked my swagger, "Oh, and what _are_ you going to do?" I asked, too stupid to take his advice.

"Oh …you don't _really_ think I won't tell you? I mean you just couldn't…" Dark and smooth, withalmost sympathy for my naiveté in his voice.

_Like I don't know what he's capable of. Like he hadn't just literally…hell, there is no other word…ravaged me, repeatedly - over the last couple of hours, in words and in deeds. _

But I didn't exactly have self preservation on my mind at that moment.

"I find it best to ask..." I teased him with my index finger already slick with his arousal. I was very boldly circling his tip with it, while my other four fingers firmly grasped him.

"Very well…." His tone was casual and unaffected, but his eyes, _oh God his eyes_, were dark and molten.

"I want to…forgive me, I misspoke….I'm _**going**_ to… fuckyou…Isabella…. _hard… and slow…_while you feed," a breathy, silken whisper gliding across an empty exhale.

His tongue conquered my mouth. I sucked it desperately until he withdrew it sharply, regaining rule of me. I whimpered, my eyes wide.

Edward pulled away from me at the most cutting moment, demonstrating his absolute discipline and control over me and this situation. I was awestruck and dreadfully hungry for more.

The calculated restraint made me realize this wasn't actually the monster. The monster wasn't capable of that much delay in gratification. No, this was _my_ Edward talking to me like _this_. The goo was back and brought its friend, disorientation.

He grinned ever so crookedly, knowing he'd won. But he was not yet satisfied with the degree of wreckage. He continuedelegantly,"I'm going to enjoy watching trickles of blood weep down your soft, snowy contours and then drink them from your body.

"I'm going to mingle the sweetness of the blood with the sweetness of _your_ nectar, and then we're going to share it… from my tongue.

"I'm going to satisfy you and have you… _fed_ in every way possible, in any way that you desire." A deliberate index finger pressed in and ran all the way down to the parting of my legs, then hooked sharply inward. My breath seized.

"Any other questions, my dear?" He grinned like a Cheshire cat. A dirty, sexy, wild-eyed, vampire Cheshire cat.

"_Ohhhh f-fuck_," I said, weak and maimed.

He whispered in my ear, "Yes…that's the plan, more or less."

He took a long, satisfied, gloating inhale, and closed his eyes, savoring my incapacitation. "Lovely. Your body already has a little gift for me. Shall I receive it?"

Before I could attempt to answer, I was smashed against the bark of a tree while Edward raised my thighs up to the level his mouth. I was nearing sensory overload once more. The massive, ancient, Sitka Spruce he'd thrown me against seemed to be as well.

The tree's bark felt like the softest corduroy caressing my back, while Edward's impossibly beautiful bronze locks tickled the insides of my thighs. It was already too much to comprehend.

Holding me in place with one hand, a deft finger from the other hand traced me masterfully and intentionally - careful not to penetrate me - even though I was already so eager, so wet, and begging for it. I gasped, startled by the sheer, abject affliction of this torment.

I tried to push forward onto his finger, but Edward already knew that trick was coming. He moved his hand, intolerably, even further away from where I wanted it to be.

He looked up at me, darkly amused. All my strength and will had been sapped and I was bracing myself from a low branch on the tree.

He was completely devoid of all compassion about torturing me. I whined in a desperate heat and hissed. He hissed back, unimpressed. Then he smiled the most crooked and depraved grin there ever was.

"Let's settle part one of the wager, shall we?

"You've already got your legs spread nice and wide for me… _thank you for that_….we might as well…finish…what you started." He drug out the _f_ on finish, making it sound like a four letter word. He addressed the statement to his eye level, not mine.

Impatient and burning for him, I grabbed his hand and tried to guide his fingers where I desperately needed them. He resisted.

I could have moved his hand if I wanted to. _Easily._ But I didn't want to overpower him, _not yet at least_.

If I was woman enough to want the hunt, surely I was woman enough to touch myself for Edward.

Of course I'd never found anywhere near the kinds of pleasure or release that he'd brought me. But this was what he wanted, and I would give him anything to make him pleased. _Anything._

So I reminisced, straining through cloudy memories into the muddy waters of human sight and sensory.

I closed my eyes and concentrated my thoughts on the lonely bedtimes when he was off hunting without me. My curiosity about how my body worked - and desperately wanting it to be him touching me. A man more beautiful than the sun told me that it was only my safety that kept him able to resist me.

I opened my eyes to include him, and found him smiling warmly, encouragingly at me - desperately heated yet restraining himself in order to encourage me if I'd needed it. _Turning me on even worse._

I chose my left hand for the honors. Helpless romantic that Edward is, I knew it would be a bigger mind-destruction for him to see the hand wearing the ring he'd given me, the ring he'd said vows over, on the hand touching myself. So I let the ring and the hand drift slowly to center stage, fingers arranging themselves intuitively.

I maintained thick eye contact with him and thought only of his long, talented fingers. Wishing they were there instead of mine.

My body easily shifted into remembrance of wanting the maestro to play me. Any threats of self-consciousness were completely dissipated.

Confidence surged in me as I spoke, "You might want to put me down. You might need your hands free for the show." Dead calm in my voice, unerring eye contact.

Edward muttered something very softly, inhumanly softly, about a tiger and a kitten and murder, but I couldn't follow. Then he shook his head with incredulous pity and released me to the forest floor. I knew that face. _I liked that face. Very much._

Without further ado, I began to tour my body _there_, lingering where it felt nice to. Tickling and circling the swollen bump he'd laid claim to many times over. My touch felt nearly ineffectual in contrast to the way he did it, of course, but still it was somehow really good.

I thought only of his tongue and of my distressed yearning for him to be there. I could feel my body filling, advancing its own need. It was amazing.

Edward's hypnotized eyes agreed.

With my right hand, I started brushing delicate touches across my neck, fantasizing that it was Edward's breath dusting across me gently. I found great pleasure in understanding my skin as the same satin-covered marble as my demi-god of a husband's. I rubbed my lonely breasts, echoes of his mouth still upon them. Then, I trailed down across my belly, so fascinated by the texture of my new skin under my new fingertips.

And finally, down further.

With my right hand, I parted my swollen body for him to see, vividly and graphically, all that he might wish for. His breath was shocky and hushed itself the wider I opened.

"Ohhhhhhhh… you are SO beautiful."

"So are you."

Mercifully ending his suspense, I smiled and plunged into myself as deeply as I could go. I sighed and held there for him while he looked on.

"Oh Bella, I love you so."

As soon as he spoke my name, I began to slide my finger in and out, the feeling far more intense than I expected. Far better than I remembered ever having on my own before.

Looking into his adoring yet half-mad eyes, I began to slowly rock my hips back and forth, steadying myself on strong thighs. Edward looked like he wanted to consume them more than blood.

I found myself in a strange reality: giving myself over to feelings that did not include him and yet very much centered on him. Straddling two worlds of experience at the same time.

I got really into it. _Really_ into it. I was moving then in a comfortable rhythm like I did when I was on top for the first time. I exaggerated my motions, wondrously discovering and experimenting with all the little ridges of sensation on and in my body.

My body reflexively began to prepare for friction from something more substantial, and far more satisfying.

I relished producing the evidence of my enjoyment, proud to display glossy fingers to Edward - like first fruits of the harvest. His eyes widened.

"May I?" he asked.

_Hell yes, _I thought, but nodded calmly.

I thought he was coming to take over, but he simply grabbed up my fingers, and one-by-one took each into his mouth, sucking and licking them gratefully like they delivered life to him. Then he kissed my ring, and returned my hand to me. _I knew he'd like the ring._

I stopped to watch, fascinated and so humbled by his love and utter addiction to me.

"Bella, please… please keep going."

"….Join me…."

"But I'm not done enjoying 'the show'. Please, a little more….only just a little more. Ask me again shortly, and I shall be honored to accompany you then. Is that alright?" He touched my cheek with fondness.

"Alright, but will you do something for me?"

He already knew what I was going to ask, and to my great surprise, he was quite willing. Smoothing his hands across the front of his jeans, he smiled with bedroom eyes. "Anything that you require."

I nodded and then sunk a second finger into my body, writhing just a little, bracing myself against the elder tree again. "Please," I whispered.

Edward effortlessly pulled his shirt over his head and then undid his pants enough to release and present himself to me.

"For you, Bella…always for you." he sighed. He paused for just a moment letting me look upon him, completely submitted to my needs, then he began to move his hands on himself.

I was prepared to help him with feeling comfortable, but he _so_ had this already. He gave me intense and intensely loving eye contact, while he rubbed himself for me. _Hot as hell._

I had to regroup just to not get dazzled. I gasped. _It was so ….wow. _It was a thousand times better than my silly day dream imagined it would be, and that was already incredible. The earnest faces he made and the un-self-conscious motions of his hands were amazing. The soft gapes. The staggering shudders. _All amazing. _I finally understood why Edward liked my faces so much.

When one loves someone as much as he loves me, there isn't much you don't want to know about that pleasure. Or much you wouldn't want to give. I was humbled and driven to greater heights of love for him. Atmosphere-exiting heights.

"…Soooo … _hard_ …for you, Bella. I crave you like this all the time."

"…So _wet_ for you…and it will be this way for you forever…_only____for you_." He grinned, blissfully on fire. I could see that bit of reality hadn't occurred to him yet. _Let him ponder that._

Edward and I moved ourselves in synchronicity and improvisation. Eyes on my beloved, I fingered myself, while he stroked and rubbed himself for me.

I could barely stand it. Neither could he. Edward's gaze was at once the only thing making it possible and impossible to keep going.

How could I have missed something as phenomenal as the way his face contorted at the specific moment of every penetration? How could I not have noticed the slight, bittersweet loss he felt on each withdrawal?

My body shook in a little spasm. At first I thought it was the epiphany, but my body shook again.

"_What the…!..._"

Edward smiled proudly - like he did when I'd first landed gracefully after jumping from the window. But he said nothing, grinning, eagerly waiting for me to catch on.

Just then, I did. It never occurred to me that I might hit Edward's master stroke, his high note, my G, but that's exactly what I'd done. It was a terrible discovery, like stumbling across a landmine.

Edward was mesmerized and groaned louder than I did. "Oh God….Bella, please… _keep going_…." He sucked in air harshly, frantically, while he sped up the pace with which he rubbed himself.

I nodded. "Anything for you."

Within moments, I was barely able to handle it. It was almost too sensitive for me to touch directly. Or I'd become accustomed to his touch. Somehow, even with perfect recall, I could not recreate the bearable unbearability he cultivated in my body.

Feelings sweeping in, overtaking me in a rush, I rapidly found that I was not in a position to keep up the performance.

I felt the world disappearing from around me and I knew it would not be much longer. He didn't look far behind me.

"Edward," I asked, breathy and surrendered, "would you …_**please**_...join me now?"

"I thought you'd never ask… _again_."

It was like going from Chopsticks to Chopin in the time it took to blink. In a fraction of a second too tiny to calculate, Edward had me on the forest floor. He brought the point of his very thrilling tongue to the heart of the matter – efficiently and effectively closing the first act of this play.

Of course being him, he didn't stop when I released; re-igniting new passions more terrible than the last.

"Edward, I need _you_ inside me, please."

"Later, love. I'm….saving myself." He winked at me and chuckled deviously before returning his tongue to me with all haste. It's hard to argue when you've suddenly become tongue-tied by a tongue that isn't even your own.

I screamed and whimpered while I unwittingly pulled up a line from the tree's root system - illustrating the fury and rampage of the emotions he'd upset inside of me. Mercifully he soothed those as well.

He was still not relieved of his tension. Even though he was waiting, I couldn't have that.

I copied his line from minutes ago, "May _I_?" He nodded less coolly than I did, but obviously playing my part.

He looked too good, _too delicious_. I looked up and quickly checked again to be sure of his comfort with my plans.

He smiled, assenting –past those reservations now - and his eyes rolled back, ready. He nodded grateful and unashamed. I finished sliding him out of his pants.

"Bella…but one thing…"

"What is it?" I asked nervously.

"I just…"

"What?"

"I just need to feel connected to you…" He extended his hand to me. I took it, floored by his depth of devotion to me, but understanding it all too well.

And there, once more, under a canopy of midnight skies, this time shrouded in trees, I took my husband into my mouth, while we held hands.

He didn't keep his hand off me this time. This time, he allowed his free hand to gently, so gently, coax my head closer to him.

"Ahhhhh, Bellahhhh," he sighed over and over. His hand was in my hair, massaging it with tenderness.

He moaned out my name in an amber tone that matched his eyes. Our bodies, moving in a natural motion of waves connecting perfectly with each other.

I'd already adjusted to the mechanics, so I could focus more naturally on just being _with _him. I gave myself over to the moment intuitively. I knew exactly how to touch him now, how to take him into me and leave him most fulfilled.

His faces were ones of beauty and turmoil. It was so amazing doing this for him while he let himself joyfully receive it. I relished the beautiful scent of him and the taste of him. He squeezed my hand tighter.

His voice shattered the darkness, as he alternately exulted my name and God's, until he bore no more will to deny his release.

I laid on his thigh waiting for the deep trembling in his body to pass, kissing him, caressing him.

"Oh…Bella, that was…. Oh God!" The happy dance in my head threatened to move to my feet.

I'd meant to excite and soothe him once more but I couldn't help myself –_ I just had to tease him just a little first_.

I ghosted up his body, still pressed tightly into him. " I thought we'd already established that God's not interfering with this little party…so what was all _that_ about?" I kissed his heavenly lips, giggling, then turned to return to my previous location, but he caught me.

Edward laughed, still shaking. He kissed me and shook his head. "You just never intend to learn, do you?" His eyes were adoring, but appraising the best way to correct my impunity.

Instantly, he pulled us up to our feet, wedging me tightly between himself and our old friend, the tree, yet again.

All in an instant, things got serious…again.

He grabbed my legs with authority and wrapped them back around his waist, pulling on my back furiously to bring my ribs to rub against his own, grating me against him. I anxiously followed his lead and matched my intensity to his – resuming the devouring of his neck. He filled the other side of mine with lurid details about his frustration with and want for me.

I'd never heard of half of these words before – parts Latin, parts French, parts sailor on shore leave - but I was very clear about his meaning and the effect that hearing them was having on me.

Bracing me against the giant Ent of a tree, he rubbed himself against me where I missed him most. Yet he denied my hips any permission to advance.

Just when I thought I could manage no more, just when I thought I was going to lose my mind….he denied me again. "_**What**_ ….are you doing?"

The monster's smirk blackened his angelic face. "Beg me."

_Ohhhh…. You ass! You sexy, sexy ass! _

"No."

His deceptively-timid finger joined in the madness, cautiously tickling the border between heaven and hell.

"_**Beg**_me." Smoldering in his tone and his touch.

"No."

"Then you leave me no choice…." Edward inserted himself very precisely up to, but no further than, the start of my walls. Then, he dramatically removed himself. And then did it again. And again. And again. _Evil!_

My head fell back and my legs began to fail me. I yelled and pushed away from him. Then I caught his hand and overpowered him to bring it where I wanted it.

"I think you have this backwards. This is where _you_ beg _me_…"

I forced his hand down to see how much wetter I'd gotten during this little exchange.  
Edward became a convert to the faith.

He sniveled and sneered, trying to reach out and touch me more now, but his free gift with purchase was over. I removed his hands completely from me and dropped to my knees before him with a smirk of my own.

Holding him firmly in my hands, passion thrilling within me, I lasered bold eyes upon him, heady with power.

"Beg me." I licked my lips at him.

"Ohhhhhhh ….you really _are_ going to kill me..." he stammered out.

"Close enough…" I assessed coolly, then furiously rushed upon him sucking from him frenzied.

Luscious, wet sucking sounds dominated every other sound around us, including Edward's par-unconscious murmuring.

"Mmmmmmm," I hummed into him, greedily enjoying him filling my mouth. I so enjoyed the decay of the last vestiges of his inhibitions. I was fully aware that me being on my knees in front of him was eroding the last of something precious in his self-denial. And I loved that his monster was complicit in it. But it was time to up the ante.

"Don't close your eyes, look at me."

"Ohhhh... Jesus. "

"If you close your eyes again, I'll stop."

He nodded, overwhelmed and totally owned, eyes glued to me now. _Huh, so that's what I look like when he does that to me. Nice._

"Good boy," I delivered with flippancy for some charming comments his monster made to me a little earlier in the evening. Then, before he could even pretend to retaliate, I palmed his perfect ass and pushed him deeper into me. He fell apart.

He roared at me in some kind of ecstatic nervous breakdown. I felt so powerful and sexually explosive. Edward erupted quickly, spilling out into me, feeding me his satisfaction. I snarled at him, pleased, with him still in my throat.

I moved my mouth off of him, smiling tauntingly, still rubbing him firmly. "Got some things on your mind?"

In a heavy, dreamy voice he replied, "Oh, only fifteen…or fifty four…."

"What?" In the time it took my brain to parse his little riddle, Edward launched himself over me, ghosting us to the ground in a way that would still allow my mouth to remain on him. In but a flicker of time, we were a mesh of limbs and mouths on each other in the most mutually-beneficial of configurations. _Not exactly head to toe_.

The gentle breeze shifted direction. The very same deer we located near were now upwind of us. They were foolishly far too close to a hunting blind of a very different kind.

Edward growled, but impressively said nothing about them, still waiting for me.

Their smell was thick and tangy in the air, assaulting my throat, alerting a different part of my new genius banks…I _knew_ smells. I knew this smell, and knew _this_ deer. I could pick it out from amongst others from at least a mile away. The very deer that we smelled in our bedroom was among their scents.

"Edward is that the same…_oh Christ_… from before?" I partially screamed out my question, turned on by that, but mostly because of what Edward's lips and tongue were doing at the time.

"Yes….." He shuddered, completely wired and trying his hardest to be calm. Not at all patient enough to fool me or to try to explain to me how I knew that.

"How can you… stand it? Isn't your throat b-b-burning?" The pain was so shocking that it accosted me by how impossibly present it had been all this time. I was amazed I had been able to keep ignoring it until now.

My right hand left Edward and flew up to hold my parched throat. The thirst burned and caked in it. It had moved beyond the clean pain of a white-hot branding iron to something more charring. _And needful._

"Discipline…." He exhaled as he grazed my thigh with his teeth.

"Oh….oh…..oh….. God!" His fingers stayed their agile course on me, "…..How….m-m-many?"

"Focus. Count them…you can do it." His voice was luscious. I think he was almost as excited about the prospect of me tracking them as he was about the impending feast.

It was as if he stilled himself, but his passionate excursions across my body continued. My second brain tab was activated and totally trained on tracking while the first was still with Edward's activities on my lines and sinews.

It was miles past intense being right in the middle of honing the pursuit and being tangled with him like this. "Count the heartbeats. Listen to the _wet_ heartbeats." _Waaaay_ too much.

His little word play about wetness while he slid inside of mine made me crazy. His fluent tongue was vigorously at work on me. My mouth was on him too, reciprocating every pleasure he'd exquisitely extracted from me. Both of us in a dimension of heat that existed beyond anything we'd previously known. But I was almost too excited to release, too focused on the hunt now, to surrender.

My mouth flooded with venom because a whole new level of seduction was about to begin. Edward snarled out a response to that. I hadn't considered the extra influx of venom impacted him too, but of course it did. _That was a nice little bonus._

Neither of us relenting from our actions, because neither of us needed to, I closed my eyes and focused. Time slowed down, or just exploded, but I could now manage it all. It was as if my monster had risen to the occasion.

"Seven, just there….."

"Mmmmmm….very good…." Edward's said slyly, while he rewarded me.

"Oh, God…..Ohhhhhhh. Edward, I'm …"

"Yes?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"**Very** sure," I whispered pointedly.

Edward nodded and then we both stilled ourselves for real. As if rehearsed, we broke away from each other and stood to face each other, letting the electricity simply stun us as it surged in our dry veins.

The pause was not long lived. We attacked each other with violent lust in something close to angry kissing. Edward's surface restraint showed major cracks. I had none to even speak of.

"Bella…you _have_ to tell me…_**now**__!_**" **he raged in a whisper that I'd become all-too-familiar with. This is what he sounded like under the final retreat of composure.

"Tell menowif you don't want…" His eyes rolled back in his head, hissing and pained. He spoke through gritted teeth. "I don't know that there's any turning back for me after this point….."

His eyes were begging me, filled with self-contempt and an almost incomprehensible level of torment and lust. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

He leaned in, teeth gritted, "You have _**no**_ idea what you do to me…" He buried his face in my hair, "Please…have mercy on me." He cowered into the space along my neck trying to bury his passion and fears about losing control there.

He moaned and ground into me compulsively in a panic of frayed, conflicted, and tortured nerves. Thick, heavy breaths between us consoled neither of us.

He stroked my thighs helplessly like an addict appraising a vial of his next fix. Edward was shaking. Angry. Nervous, like he was being held in a fire, and willing himself not to move.

"Edward, listen to me, I really want this. Look at me, I _**want**_ this. This is not something I'm unsure of. Can you trust that you don't need to worry about me regretting this?"

"…_Bella_….…" he begged weakly, looking down, still rubbing my hips.

I hissed, so aroused I couldn't stand it. I turned his face to mine. I looked him in the eyes and bared my teeth to him, my mind dark and raving. I smiled drunk with terrible power thrilling in my body. _I was so ready for this hunt now. __**So**__ ready._

"I won't ask you to stop…I won't. But one thing before we go..." He was wary of what I might say but he leaned in nonetheless.

"Leave _the_ deer for me." I could feel my eyes glowing, literally glowing, with desire and greed. And we were both okay with that.

He relaxed into such a wonderfully dirty, dirty grin. The velvet voice was back, as was his ease. "Silly girl," he taunted, "how else can I have you while you're having_ it_?"

He hissed and pulled my head back for one more violent kiss. "Wait for me here. Please. I want to bring you the first… _taste_." I nodded, dazed. He grinned again.

Edward shivered and growled at the same time. Threadbare resolve changed call signs to non-existent.

He took off like a rocket.

I leaped to the highest limbs of the tall Spruce to watch. My beautiful hunter had already closed in for the kill.

Just as the first time I'd ever watched him, he was magnificent. It was sheer artistry to watch him move. It didn't hurt that he was naked.

He sprung precise and lethal. Impassively, he sunk his teeth into the buck. It was a precision kill - the deer had not suffered. Even in his heightened state, he'd chosen no distress for the animal. It affirmed for me that we could be human _enough_ to enjoy ourselves in a way that wasn't truly monstrous.

The heart still beat in the animal, an involuntary reflex, unaware that it'd been ended. Slower and slower it diminished to nothing; but for a golden while, it still deliciously pumped the sweet blood. It was a soothing, sensual rhythm and it resonated deep within me.

Watching him feed was like an elemental, primordial kind of foreplay. This was far more than pride that he belonged to me. This was base and compulsory, and it called out to me from my predator DNA.

Edward broke from feeding in a sharp, reluctant hiss and turned back to where he left me. His countenance was very carefully staid. It would have been believable had the focus in his eyes not looked so unstable and random.

There was a single, thin line of blood slowly inching down from the corner of his mouth. It was macabre and sensuous at the very same time. And I'd never wanted something from him more.

I leaped out of the tree softly, elegantly, landing ninety feet below in the path just ahead of him.

"You're a clean hunter. You spilled that on purpose."

No response of any kind. Not even a twinkle in his eyes. _Edward_ had nothing to say.

But the monster…he had things to tell me.

His dark, terrible, hauntingly beautiful eyes filled me with his story. He grabbed me to him and kissed my mouth, delivering a stream of hot, rich blood into me. And I forgot everything I'd meant to fear about this moment.

I melted, literally melted, as it coated and soothed my scorching throat. I reached out and rubbed his body aggressively while I drank it all in. Edward growled into my mouth. His tongue probed for answers I didn't have, as I gleaned every mist and droplet that I could from him.

Very quickly, his mouth was clean. I was so frustrated that I would have to break away from this kiss to hunt that I screamed. Ear-piercing screeches came from me in registers that I was not capable of intentionally producing. I scared myself with a start, but Edward's blazing eyes settled me back into the wanting.

I touched my finger to the corner of my mouth, collecting a faint trace of blood. I stared at the microscopic smudge of red on my finger in wonder. I put the finger to his lips, offering it to him. He accepted, lingering long past the last of its taste.

Our eyes were locked on each other in a taste of something more, when the windtumbled past us again. I heard my own breathing quicken. Edward's too. Thatdeer, _my _deer, was the center of my whole world again. A flush of adrenaline warmed my insides. Tingling, thrilling me.

_Moment of truth._ The moment called and I answered it.

I flew from Edward in disregard for anything but the sound of the deer's pulse and its smell.

Its heartbeat was like a beacon bringing me in, a siren conjuring beauty for the crash.

I couldn't argue with the compulsion. I couldn't do anything but run faster. The air blurred out any other focus. I was nothing more than a cliché, a moth led irrationally to flame. Not a wife. Not a daughter. Not a sister or a friend. Not even a mother.

I was a hunter.

It wasn't a question of anything but reaching and consuming it. My entire purpose for existing in that moment rested in the urgency of this fact.

About a half a second behind my muscles executing, I realized I was already airborne and leaping on instinct, with eager teeth bared out in front of keenly parted lips.

Before I even landed, my teeth were already sinking through to the libation pouring inside. The boon to my obsession simultaneously quelled and inflamed both of my appetites.

The blood rushed hot and appealing into my mouth. It was just as satisfying, just as ambrosial as I knew it would be. Something about my fixation with this creature made its aroma quite pleasurable to me. _Arousing_. Not at all like the other deer I'd fed on. This deer had a perfume of sweet waters and fresh greens. This deer also carried with it an association with Edward's fire. _Toothsome, indeed._

It was only as I drank in more that I realized Edward's proximity to me. He was close. Very close. And approaching very carefully behind me. _To settle our accounts._

I hissed low, unwilling to break off in order properly defend my kill. The blood might cool too quickly or something else might happen to spoil this fulfillment.

_Fascinating thing, instincts_. I knew he was coming, I felt threatened, and yet I couldn't make myself break from feeding.

He came up behind me at a steady pace. Not so fast that I would be forced to defend my claim, yet not so slow that he was taking precaution to prevent that from happening. In hindsight, I kind of think he was hoping for the latter. In hindsight, I think I kind of was too.

His pace was steady. Determined. _Inevitable._

He stopped, and boldly whispered three words that changed the way the earth spun on it axis.  
"On. Your. Knees."

My mouth watered freely, almost dripping venom. Another part of me carried out a very similar process.

My eyes snapped open. My jaw unlocked from feeding. And I obeyed him.

I came to kneel alongside the deer. I arched my back low, my knees wide apart. Eager. _Hungry. _The anticipation was killing me. I was so curious to see the expression on Edward's face, but somehow I knew that if I did, we would end up fighting.

_So of course I looked_…

His eyes were deadly. His smile was angry. And his body was ….._ohhhhhh…. so….wow_.  
'Good enough to eat' had never been more apropos.

I stared at him coldly, disturbing levels of passion starting to rise within me.

"Careful with those eyes, love….ssssssssssssssss…someone might get the wrong idea."

I touched a finger to my tongue, wet it, and drug it through one of the patches of sticky red on my chest from yet another messy feed.

I brought the stained finger behind me and painted the first skin that it touched. "And what idea would that be?"

Edward flew to me in flash, kneeling down in the grass behind me. He raked his fingernails across me and groped my bottom. He took his time spreading me to make me more availabl_e_ to him. Then he accepted my offering on his tongue, growling, almost purring in his throat.

He whispered in my ear. "That you might be looking for a _struggle_."

"But what if my mate's not…_up_...to it?" I leaned back into him and reached behind me to grab and stroke him brutally.

"Now, now…you don't want to be mistaken for a _bitch. _You knowthey just end up mounted… and panting. " He handled himself, rubbing his head up and down the length of me. Pushing into me just slightly.

"Fuck you." I wiggled and rubbed myself on him, rolling my hips. Desperate. He had enough will within him to remain perfectly still. I was impressed, and frustrated.

"Manners, please." His soft breath tickled my neck like cotton. Edward growled and forced me back down to all fours. Then, he grabbed my hand and rubbed our fingers inside one set of my lips, then the other.

He then ran our fingers across the stains on my chest and we did a little finger painting. I nearly passed out and I'm not sure that's even possible. He licked my fingers clean while I struggled to stay balanced. I didn't know what I wanted to turn around and do more: scratch his eyes out or scratch his back.

"**Fuck**. **You**." I whispered, voice shaking, burdened heavy with crushing need – and anger seething that he'd mentally defeated me.

He moved one hand up to ghost across my neck and pulled me backwards to his mouth. He bared his teeth on me, biting at my neck, so perilously close to breaking the skin that it burned.

"I assure you that _is _coming…." His tone changed from teasing to serious. "…but tell me…_please_… tell me what you're _hungry_ for. Say it. Out loud." He spoke through his teeth, in obviously hard-won control of his tone.

I caved, lost.

"Fuck me … while I feed." My body rippled all over in tiny tremors, and I returned to the comforts of the still-very-warm blood. And waited for what was coming for me.

"….have your… _fill." _

Edward roared out like a beast. Then he entered me and took me like one.

Edward fucked me so completely. _On every level of meaning. _The deer's blood filling my mouth and Edward filling my body so powerfully. The height of two appetites merging into something altogether higher. Destroying me. Destroying any pretense to deny it.

I gave myself to the intersection of these two carnal pleasures. My body was shaking. The smells, fragrant and dense. The scent of deer, the scent of Edward. The rippling, wet flesh at both of the connections. I moaned in a trance-like state of unthinking pleasure.

"Bella…." Edward sucked on the ball of my shoulder and raked scratches down my sides.

Just as he'd promised earlier, he slowed down, way down. Venomously slow. He joined me in my trance, heat of passion and blood slowly spreading through me, through us both. I was so out of control, so overcome.

I swallowed blood convulsively as he threw himself into me over and over again, bracing me to him.

I put my middle finger in my mouth, and reached my arm back to feed that finger to his mouth, blood clinging to it. He took it, snarling, grinding into me with everything he had. His body was pinned to mine so intensely, his mouth latched to my finger, sucking it rhythmically.

I couldn't stand it. I reared back into him, and with my left arm, hooked my wrist behind his neck.

We moved in one exaggerated roll and wave after another. Edward stroked me so hard. So stirringly deep. _SO. GOOD_. I fell forward pulling him with me and returned to my drink.

Edward was still sucking my middle finger, simulating the way I ran my tongue up and down his length while he was inside my mouth. Mind blown, I clawed into his neck unconsciously.

"Darling… if you decapitate me, I'm afraid I may get… upset." He pinched my nipples severely, as a caution, fondling and kneading the whole of my breasts in pleasant contrast. I cried out and quickly moved my hand down.

He guided the culpable hand down between my legs, directing me to his little pearl, which was nearly bursting. His index finger over mine directing me.

His mouth close in on my ear, "Now, if you need something to _punish_…"

Determined to illicit more penance from me, thrusts became rougher and faster now, a dangerous pleasure for us both. Each time my finger slowed, he drove harder. Each time I moaned, he drove harder. Each time I attempted to attack him - _and I did try_ - he drove harder. All the while nicking me with mischievous teeth, and incensing me with fingers that supervised, but did not linger.

He rolled himself inside of me in one wicked churn after another, and I screamed his name, shaking. 

"Excellent." He drove harder yet. _So Evil. _

Edward said very few actual sentences, mostly growling, occasionally speaking bluntly about his plans for my body. I believe I lost the ability to speak around him telling me he would fuck me on his tongue after it was hot with the blood of a fresh kill.

He took great delight when I couldn't support myself on my elbows after that. His hips also took full advantage of the change in my body's angle.

"Ohhh…Ohhh…Ohhh!" I screamed, but quickly stifled, hating to give that to him. But I was beyond my own feeble choices and options now. Dignity was but a faded memory.

Shortly, the balance of deer was spent. My body was flushed with the warmth of the blood and his fire. The sounds of Edward's panting breaths synchronized me to him and I reached out to touch him. He caught my hand and laced my fingers with his. He held me stable and delivered merciful blows that finished me satisfied and whole.

Not long after, Edward went the way of me and the deer, still bracing my hips. I turned my head far to the right so I could bewith him as he did. He kissed and licked my sticky mouth while he spilled inside of me, shivering violently, still stroking into me like he was compelled not to stop.

In that moment I understood why the wolves howled at the moon. It was an affirmation of them living fully in and embracing their authentic selves. Expressing themselves in their most elemental moment.

That understanding folded into my acceptance of our sexual thirsts - and that acceptance called me higher.

I had no idea that giving myself over to this desire would bring me to an almost mystical space, but it did. The experience was s_o _beyond the limitations of mere language.

I felt the play-anger, the little-girl-playing-dress-up - that liked testing out my new self and sexuality by playing at ego battles with Edward - beginning to yield that bravado to something different, something stronger, something bigger. Something intrinsically and exponentially more powerful.

The games were fun, _no doubt_, but there was something even more real beyond it. I felt something almost god-like in the range of me now. Edward felt it too. I saw in hindsight that he started there when he came to me after my kill, but he followed my lead into lesser dances.

I took myself into the real _Vampire _within.

She needed no posturing to be rife with sensuality and seduction. She needed no clever comments, no prideful motivations. No permissions to arch her ass into her man and give him a torrential fucking.

Ripping apart his rhythm along with the ground below her.

Miles beyond being a frivolous newborn playing at being a bad ass in silver designer shoes, the real She within _was_ a real bitch in heat - raw and instinctual. A real bad ass, owned by no one, not even Edward. A true goddess.

A new sound came from me, somewhere lower in my throat, like a growling hum. Like the sound of a stalking tiger patiently and methodically tiring its prey. Edward went nuts and called back to me in the exact same sound. _Heavenly, terrible, trouble._

I clenched onto him so hard inside of me that he scratched into my skin in extreme riot, groaning and yelling in some newly-tapped feral registers of his own.

Pleasure and pain had become subjective with blurred boundaries. I bit into the deer's throat again, addressing my need for another kill bite.

Edward growled proudly and possessively, and violently clutched my haunches. The sounds of our living stone bodies banging together became the fuel driving our lust to even more hostile levels. We continued leering obscene noises at each other - while we shook and rumbled the ground underneath us from the sheer force of our vicious fucking.

In this state, I couldn't talk. Mostly couldn't think. I really wished he could read my mind right then. And he surely touched me like he knew exactly what I needed, even though I didn't rationally know myself.

A burning sensation sought through me until it found and lit my wild heart. Then it dripped slowly through me like the lazy wick of an oil lamp…until it met with and ignited a sister torch below. Both fuses lit, the pleasure of abandon and furious thrashing screamed out of me on every pathway of limbs and nerve endings I had.

My punching fists sank through the "hard" earth like porridge. Urges sated, if not extinguished, I gushed out to Edward, who'd been only waiting for me, and we released together in meteoric crescendo.

_God, even like this he waits for me._

"Edward…" It was all I could speak, all I could give him. But he still knew. 

He moved my hair out of the way and kissed the back of my neck, tracing the top of my spine with his finger. "Always."

Passion like that changes you irrevocably. You will always retain pieces of who you are, but sometimes there are other parts that have to be left behind just to make the space. Sometimes there is just nothing that can prepare you for transformation into something like that. Sometimes there is just no way to understand the destination prior to the journey, beyond any kind of superficial, trivial grasp.

Nothing I learned from my adoptive family had even hinted at this part of vampire life. _Talk about keeping secrets_. 

Edward tells me often that I saved his life, that I gave him a reason to live. I feel now like I will have the courage to tell him that his love gave me a reason to be born into something brand new, more than merely being born into his kind. Something more myself and alive than I ever could have known until I got here.

This was our moment to savor. I closed my eyes and pressed my face to his. Both of us with decidedly and literally sanguine faces. We did not speak, for what could be said that would even service what we'd just shared. The silence filled bar after bar of harmonious peace all around us, for miles and miles of moments.

I had no idea it could be like this, and I wanted more. Now. With five deer still very close by, I knew more would be sooner than later. Why did they just keep scattering to someplace nearby? They weren't even trying to make it hard for us.

This time, we hunted together. It was a kinship of warriors. The thrill of hunting mixed with glorious intermissions for dangerous and deranged sex - and a little more fighting. _Okay, a lot more fighting. _ Crouching hunches that turned into deliciously exotic and beastly sutras. Blood lavished on nearly every inch, _and I mean inch_, of us both, then, hungrily consumed in the most creative of ways.

Edward made good on all of the promises he made to bring pleasure to parts of my body at temperatures he could never offer me before. I reciprocated, bringing him to his knees, and mine, a few times as well.

Time passed slowly, quickly, and in and out of all context, meaning and value.

_One deer left._ We could have tracked and hunted more, but we both silently agreed this would be the last hunt for this night - a night that was already on the razor's edge of morning. We looked at each other trying to determine who would have the final pursuit of the evening.

I winked at him, "Go!" He smiled subtly and then tore away running towards the deer. I followed close on his trail. As efficient as he was sexy, he'd already made the kill by the time I caught up to him.

Passion dissolving my brain and his, he looked over his shoulder. "Join me."

"Bring it to me," I baited, while my finger traced my navel.

He turned and drank the animal almost dry, careful to drain all but one final mouthful. I waited, watching longingly at his pale, naked, gorgeous form.

He brought the precious last mouthful to me, blood covering his chin. I licked my lips at him.

He hissed out the first part of my full name, "Iiiiiiiiissssaahhhhhh," his eyes rolling back, blood tumbling forth out of his mouth spilling towards me the wider his mouth opened. I smashed myself against him drinking up all that I could. I allowed some to roll down his body and rub between us. The warm sensation between us was so good.

He grabbed me up and wrapped my legs around him, planning to sex me like this. I pressed myself into him thrilled; this position was an obvious but as-yet-unspoken fantasy for us both.

Edward licked me spotless of every last bit of blood. Paying far more careful attention to detail on some parts of my chest than others.

As Edward penetrated me, my left leg defied my instructions to stay hooked behind him. Rather than keep arguing with the errant leg, Edward just casually threw it over his shoulder, tilting me back almost perpendicular to him.

Something about this position caused us to fall out of rougher matters and into heavy love making.

My hips got looser and I started rolling in big motions that let me grind fantastically against him.

"Jeeeesus, Bella. Oh shit….._Oh shit_!"

He grabbed my bottom pumping into me in sharp breaks like dangerous waves crashing in from a stormy sea. Each time my hips rolled into him, he met me there.

He sighed, loving how I threw myself. I was loving how he made me sing in notes that only my new vocal chords … and these incentives… could compose.

From this position, I could display all of my insides to him. I knew he loved seeing me - seeing us - like this, so I titled my pelvis up and spread myself as wide as I could. He watched with widened eyes at the motions of our bodies… alternately looking into my eyes and then back to our union.

He was having difficulty standing. I could relate – of course I wasn't supporting anyone else at the time of my troubles.

I wanted to see too so I tried to crane myself over. Edward smiled at my curiosity and tried to angle me so I could, but it didn't work. He smiled again, a little naughtier, but still lovingly. "I'll get you straight to a mirror when we get home. But for now, trust me when I tell you, it's the best thing you'll ever see."

I couldn't hold my head up anymore. I let my neck fall back, and let my eyes open upside down on the scenery behind me. A broad thumb strummed me just above our join. My hips changed motion to a decidedly more vertical wave. Edward matched it, crashing into me at the exact right moments.

God, the feeling was so beautiful, so amazing between us. Edward slowly elevated my back. He wanted to kiss me and hold me closer. I wanted it too. He just needed a bit of a hissing detour at my neck first, and I was not opposed.

I pressed him closer, running my hands through his hair and feverishly across his back.

"Bite," I directed in a ringing, sultry whisper.

Edward froze. He face was staggering, his eyes conflicted. He bared full teeth to me, his face coming in slowly, then paused, torn. He looked down and slowed down.

I redirected his face to mine, "BITE!" I threw my neck towards him, exaggerating the bend of it.

He didn't need a third invitation.

Edward clasped both sides of my face, tilting my head, eying me, appraising me. I held tightly to his body on my own without him holding me there.

He threw his head back widening his jaws. He growled, and then sharply turned my head away, bringing his teeth to lead the deadly kiss. Then he closed on my neck.

Jaws locked on me, I moaned in an awful condition of passionate, _satisfying_ anguish.

Edward returned his hands to my legs and stroked into me slowly, reverently, while he growled helplessly into the stinging wound. He was trying to be gentle since he knew the venom had caught up to me.

"Don't hold back … God, don't… not now," I moaned, so strung out, as the venom seeped pitilessly through me. He nodded and broke to peck one sweet kiss upon my neck. Then he growled to end all, dropped us to the ground, and returned to my throat…

Each movement was fluid grace and lethal savagery. Each sound was other-worldly and yet earthy. Each stinging press into my skin felt like a gentle tickle as it re-healed. Each dig I made into the flesh of his back made him thrust into me harder, more excited, more bonded to me. Pain was again a relative, subjective concept.

As the venom bled into the living marble of my neck and shoulder, I came. Shivering, I held him close to me, his eyes burning right into mine as we held eye contact through my release. I think I may have squeezed him just a little too hard by accident, but he said nothing. He held nothing but love in his eyes. Pain had not weakened our love one iota.

He held still and kissed my cheek, while the venom slashed through me, abruptly halting his own very imminent release.

"Keep going…you're not fin-fin-."

"Shhh. Hush now, my insane angel." He kissed my still-healing neck. I winced away from the contact. The pain had moved solidly into the non-subjective category.

"Love, I'm _so_ sorry. This is exactly the kind of thing that I feared would-"

"Edward, for the love of ponies… please don't start with the -."

"Okay, I'm _not_ sorry. Is that better? Please don't upset yourself. I just hate that you're….Right, I'll stop."

"Thank you."

"I'm going to be the only vampire in the world with a heart condition." 

"Hey, I'm sorry about your neck too. Are you okay?" He snuggled in closer with me and laid his forehead against mine.

"Just like new," he kissed my nose with compassion, "Please don't worry about me, not right now, especially.

"That kind of thing is to be expected as we explore this …I don't even know what all of _this_ is.

"But learning how to give yourself over to those feelings and still be present enough to make good choices is difficult, _very,_" he finished sadly, fingers tracing my neck's new crescent marks. It was still smarting a bit, but I held still trying to help him feel less guilty.

"Well, there's one big difference."

"You mean apart from the point of neck injury and the intentional venom infliction?"

"No, you drama queen," I rolled my eyes, starting to feel just a little better and a little saucy. He rolled his too, but I'm betting against his eye roll being sauce-related. "You were invited. I wanted that, Edward."

He looked at me puzzled, waiting to hear more. "Okay… I don't know if you have ever had this particular glitch, but right there in that moment, I _wanted_ you to bite me. I wanted to give that to you because I know how it feels when I want to do it to you. But we stop ourselves.

"And I fully understood the consequences that would bring. But I wanted your pleasure to be total…but then you just stopped… "

He nodded and touched my hair. "Bella, what you did …that's one of many beautiful, selfless, _and very painful_ things you have done out of love for me. I hate myself for each one that I've caused. 

"Love, please don't look at me like that. I'm not 'starting', I'm just explaining.

"But that's not a 'glitch' specific to you. I've almost offered myself to you like that on no less than six occasions tonight. I only stopped myself because I thought it might be too much for you to process if we… _escalated_. _So much for not escalating._ You haven't even been a vampire twenty-four hours yet and we've already..." he shook his head fondly savoring his memory, "but I digress…

"What you must always, always remember is that my pleasure lies with yours. Even when we engage the most corporeal aspects of ourselves - I HAVE to care for you. This is not a choice for me, Bella. I just love you this way. You're everything to me. Do you really imagine that I could truly enjoy anything that causes you suffering?"

"Actually, when we were in middle of _things_, it wasn't totally…um, painful. It was kind of turning me on more. "

"I keep saying it, you keep ignoring me, but you really _are_ going to be the death of me. You understand that, yes?"

I rolled my eyes again, "But there's something else to it too, something more difficult, but important for me to say."

"Please, what is it?"

"Every bite on my body," he looked down as I continued, "except for the first one, is connected to you saving me… or a hungry little person. Now _I _digress..."

"Edward, I just wanted one bite, an intentional one from you that wasn't connected to anything else but your passion for me. Can you understand that?"

Edward's eyes fell into a sea of emotion. I couldn't tell if he was willing himself to cry or not to.

I kissed him and rolled myself over to straddle and sit up on him. I asked him a question with my eyes. He nodded yes and gently, sacredly guided himself up to the start of me. Saying back thank you and I love you with only his eyes. I pushed forward and welcomed him in the rest of the way, his broad palms caressing my thighs. We sighed together as I started rocking slowly.

Eye contact soft and kind, I nodded back and asked him, "Where do you want it?" I lightly massaged his neck tracing and identifying places I thought a bite scar would be sexy and not show over his collar.

"Them," he corrected, "I want two."

He pointed to a spot on his lower neck very near to one I picked out.

Then, killing me, to the spot directly over his heart.

He flexed his chest out to me, ready, rolling softly into to me from underneath. He spoke in a dreamy voice. "Please, my love…" He touched a gentle finger to my lips, outlining them.

"I will, I promise." I kissed his finger. "I'm just too in love with you right now. I've got to get back to being worked up enough to want to bite you. I just need a minute."

"A minute?" he raised his eyebrows mischievously, "Are you sure? Should we time you?"


End file.
